The Hunt
(La Caza)
Carlos Saura / Spain / 1965 / 88 min
Spanish with English subtitles
Three friends go hunting in a sun-scorched area pockmarked by Civil War trenches. The story explores the interaction among three friends who go hunting with 20-year-old Enrique in a dry, sun-scorched area pockmarked by rabbit holes and old Civil War trenches. As the day wears on and the heat intensifies, the three older men find it harder and harder to hold back the tensions among themselves. Their lives have taken different paths, and each man confronts the other in clashes that ultimately reproduce the fratricidal war for which this film is a resounding metaphor. Due to the political circumstances of the historical moment in which Saura made his film, a moment that, through censorship, imposed the need to resort kind of a subterfuge or “underground” narrative mechanisms if they wanted to convey messages of a certain draft. It is likely that to a large extent, some of the keys of The Hunt can be found in the necessity imposed by the environment in which the author and his work moved.