All language subtitles for El.Topo.1970.FS.REMASTERED.SPANISH.720p.BluRay.H264.AAC-VXT

I never meant to do
something outrageous.

I just wanted to express myself.

I decided to do a western.

I wanted a genre that everybody
would appreciate and understand.

And of course I was unable
to make a "normal" film.

I tried, but I couldn't.

El Topo was shown
at the Elgin Theater,

thanks to John Lennon
and Yoko Ono.

John was showing his short films there.

And Douglas, who was the sales
representative of my film, said to him,

"Nobody will see this film
unless you introduce it.

"Please show your films
and then ask the crowd to stay."

And that's what they did.
They asked the audience to stay.

Of course, all of New York's intellectual elite
was there to see Lennon's film.

And after that, El Topo
played for about a year in that theater.

I went there a few times. There was
always a cloud of marihuana smoke.

When I made my way to the stage
to introduce the film,

people would put joints in my hands

and I got onstage
with a handful of them.

I had suddenly become
a mythical character for them!

This movie is semi-autobiographical.

That child is my son
and I hadn't seen him for seven years.

His mother got pregnant
and moved to Europe.

When Brontis gets off the horse
and I say,

"Today you turn seven",
it was his actual birthday.

He carries a bear I gave to his mother
before she left.

It is the bear of childhood.

That photograph is a picture
of his mom.

It was traumatic for him
seeing his bear buried.

But I only cared about the film.
I didn't care about his feelings.

Years later, I had to correct my mistake
by giving him a bear and saying...

Well, I did it in a book.
I gave him a bear and apologized.

The title art was done by a great
Mexican painter called Vicente Rojo.

Those are my hands.

I paid attention to every detail
to make El Topo like a vengeful god.

I was inspired by rabbis,
by Zorro, by Elvis Presley.

I watched an Elvis Presley film in France,
where nobody liked him.

I saw it in a neighborhood cinema.
He was despised there.

I saw him dressed
in a black leather suit

that made a great impression on me.

I wanted a black leather suit, too!

Here we used a ladder
to put this girl on a pole.

There were no special effects.

She was up there for three hours.
I almost killed her.

There was no water in that pond
and I needed 5,000 liters of fake blood.

It's been said that I was cruel,
that I killed animals.

You'll see dead animals.

But I bought those animals
at the municipal slaughterhouse

because they were sick
and condemned to die.

So no animals were killed.

Those animals were going to be sacrificed
and I purchased them.

I said to these women, "Don't move!"

I forgot to tell them the shot was over
and they stayed still for four hours!

They had to be taken to hospital
because they got sunstroke.

They were afraid of me
because I was wearing black.

They saw me as a god,
as a murderer.

In El Topo, the sound designer
was a very humble man called Gavira.

He was a genius.
All the Mexican studios used him.

He had an assistant...

He would use pieces of garbage
to create the sounds.

He used coconut shells to create
the sound of the galloping horses.

He would create the sound of fire
by squeezing cellophane.

It was amazing. He did all these things
with a bag full of garbage.

He is teaching his son
to be a killer like him.

Rather than a killer, he is an outlaw
who brings justice.

With those rings,
he's going to attract the bandits.

This scene was inspired by Buñuel,

because Buñuel had a fetish
for women's shoes,

So I exaggerated it
and I got this bandit to suck a shoe.

He's a fetishist bandit.

He's a Mexican actor
that worked on some American films.

His name is Arau. Alfonso Arau.

I mention Alfonso Arau because
he directed a film that had some success,

based on a novel
by his wife, Laura Esquivel,

called Like Water for Chocolate.

He became famous after that.

First I wrote the script.

Then I scouted the locations,
and that changed the script.

Then I cast the film,
and that changed the script, too.

Initially, I wasn't going to act
in the film.

I looked for an actor
who would dye his hair,

shave it off, grow a beard...
Everything that El Topo does.

But no Mexican actor would do it
because they also work on TV.

And since nobody would do it,
I ended up playing the lead.

I rented the costumes from the opera.

I did not have the money
to design them myself,

so I rented them from a place that had
all sorts of costumes used in the theater.

The size of the bandits
determined which costume they got.

For instance,
this man is wearing a lady's cape.

I dressed my cowboys
with all sorts of things.

To me the bullets in the head
are very comical.

It's like some intellectuals

who have bullets in their heads
instead of thoughts.

This is the only zoom in the film.
I was very much against zooms.

I was also against close-ups.

There is only one close-up
in the movie.

I believed that film should communicate
with body movement,

because of my background as a mime.

Bodies, not faces. TV is about faces,
cinema is about bodies.

I had a fantastic Director of Photography
called Rafael Corkidi

who really wanted to make films.

I directed him by tying myself to him
from behind with a belt.

I held his waist and moved him,
as if he were a machine.

He would shoot as I moved him.

I made all camera movements
in the film by repositioning the DP.

In this shot I did not care
if the actors left the frame.

What you see in the shot
is not everything.

There is off screen action as well.

The bandits leave the shot
and come back.

There is action off screen
as well as on screen.

I raised the sound of the goats
until it becomes unbearable.

Baa! Baa!
It's unbearable.

I enhanced the subliminal sounds
and put them in the foreground.

I thought, "Cinema is cinema."

I don't want to make films
with location sound.

If we create the sounds afterwards,
then they are an artistic manifestation.

I'm not shooting theater.
There's too much theater in cinema.

Cinema is not theater.

The accidental sounds have a purpose.

I only make the actors talk in my films

when I can't show
what I want to show visually.

I don't distinguish
between the comic and tragic.

This can be very funny
and very tragic at the same time.

I was trying to meld all the genres,

comedy, tragedy, drama...
all together.

Since I did not have the means to make
the bandits explode,

I made them die slowly.

They are going to die calmly, slowly.

The opposite of the spectacular deaths
in most westerns.

Here the character shows his cruel side.
El Topo is cruel.

He is relentless.

He feels he is doing justice.

There's no mercy.

All this violence among these
poor little animals creates a contrast.

This was forbidden at the time.

To fire a gun at somebody
in the same frame.

That's why El Topo had difficulties
airing on television.

Here he shoots
and there's the explosion.

In commercial films
you see the firing in one shot,

and the impact in a another one.
What I did is forbidden.

I was born in 1929 in the north of Chile,

in Tocopilla,
a small town of 2000 people.

I used to go to the cinema,
once a week, until I was ten.

In the theaters they had serials.

There was a new episode
every Sunday.

There I saw Zorro, Crótalo,

and they had cowboys, too.

I didn't know the cowboys were American.
I didn't know America.

Tocopilla was all I knew.

They showed all kinds of films...

Frankenstein,
The War of the Worlds, westerns...

I thought the cowboys
lived in an enchanted country.

They lived in a magical land...
A land of fairies.

I find it very poetic that he blows his nose
with a page of the Bible,

while respecting it at the same time.

It's respect and disrespect.

I also feature homosexual bandits,
which was shocking for the times.

The tough guys are homosexuals
It's really weird.

They treat the priests
as if they were ladies...

People were not used to seeing
homosexuals portrayed like that in films.

Now in every TV show
there is a lesbian,

a homosexual, a transvestite
or a transsexual character.

It's mandatory.

So I think we also
must feature necrophilia,

bestiality and nice things like that.

I had a friend who was a surrealist,

and every time he attended
a family dinner,

he would rape the grilled chicken.

And people would eat
the grilled chicken

where he'd previously
inserted his penis.

He was into bestiality,

not with a live animal,
but with a grilled chicken.

It was very difficult
to find blonde boys in Mexico.

Luckily I had an assistant, Pablito,
who was the boss of the "gay power"

and I was able to get
the most beautiful homosexuals.

After reverence comes brutality.
All mixed together.

This woman is not an actress.

I found her in Mexico City's
Zona Rosa dressed like that.

She made her own clothes.

She had taken 500 tabs of LSD,
and she was out of her mind.

I never knew her name.

She was either English or American.
I didn't even know her nationality.

She didn't speak Spanish.

She made the film
and then she disappeared.

I dubbed her voice using a 50-year-old
woman to make it deeper.

This scene is very important

because we are approaching the god...

The evil character.

This actor, David Silva,
had been a leading man.

He had worked in many movies...

...as a handsome young man
in the 40s.

But he had got old and
nobody called him to act anymore.

I thought I would dig him up and after
El Topo his career took off again.

I have always hated dictators.

And I always thought I had created
that character based on Pinochet.

But now I realize that it's impossible,
since I shot the movie before the coup.

It was like a premonition.

Pinochet is the most hateful character
I can think of. He's dreadful.

More hateful than Hitler,
more than Mussolini or Stalin,

because Pinochet is dumb.

He once said, "If I find a poet in the street,
I will punch him in the face."

That's the kind of monster he was.

He was anti-culture.
It was shameful.

I was trying to illustrate him
taking on power.

He starts as a helpless baby,
rolling around in his bed for his mom.

Little by little he becomes dominant.

He adds lifts to his boots, to look taller.

As he puts on the symbols of power,
he becomes an almighty god.

The disguise of power.
That's what I wanted to represent.

Here comes God,
and the pigs come out behind him.

In this shot
I wanted to make fun of westerns.

It's always the same.

The shot of the outlaw's legs...

...and between the legs,
we see the bandits in the background.

I wanted to do this "classic" shot.

She is the General's sexual slave.

Afterwards she escapes with El Topo.

But she is evil. She pushes El Topo
to become powerful like the General.

She is seduced by power.

The film changed my son Brontis's life.
I always warned him, "It's just a movie."

Since my sons were born into a family
of artists, they are artists.

Brontis chose the most humble
form of art, the theater.

Theater requires many sacrifices
because it's ephemeral.

It is like religion.
You do a play, the play is over.

You do another play, that play is over...
Nothing remains.

My other son, Axel Cristóbal,
chose therapy.

He practices a sacred art
that I call psycho-shamanism.

He heals diseases
by performing theater plays -

ceremonies inspired
by the Mexican shamans he met,

with me, as a child.

I introduced him to that.

And my son Adán, who is now 25,

plays every instrument.

He also sings and dances.
He has his own band.

They all chose
a different path from mine.

It is very difficult to have a father like me,
a known father.

It's a drama.

They have to castrate me,
they have to kill me,

they have to overcome me.

It's difficult. Somebody always says,
"Ah, you are that guy's son.

"You are son of the guy
who made El Topo, blah blah..."

It's hard for them.

So each of them chose a path
that has nothing to do with me.

Of course, I was aware of this problem
when they were little.

I made a circle in the backyard
of our house and we sumo wrestled.

You had to throw your opponent
outside the circle.

Many times I would let them win.

I think a father
must allow his children to beat him.

This is essential
when you're raising children.

You can't always be the father who knows,
dominates, and directs it all.

It's a problem, because later in life
the child thinks,

"If I beat my father, I kill him."

In my book,
La danza de la realidad,

I say that my father wanted to turn me
into a homosexual for two reasons -

one, because he hated his father.

When you hate your father,

you don't want your last name
to continue to exist.

So he didn't want me to have children.

Second, his younger brother
stole his mom away from him.

His name was Benjamin
and he was a homosexual.

Because I was the youngest,

he focused his hatred
for his brother on me.

He always called me Benjamin,
he never learned my name.

So in order to be accepted
by my father

I would have had to become
a homosexual and not have any kids.

I rebelled against all that
and had five children.

Things didn't go
according to plan for him.

El Topo must have issues
with his father.

Metaphorically speaking,
the General is El Topo's father.

He confronts his father.

El Topo is a father himself.
He travels with his son.

And here is this paternal figure
that he hates.

The almighty father that he must beat.

Every son has to psychologically kill
the powerful father, castrate him.

This is a bit like...

It's like the scenes in...
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

It's an Italian spaghetti western.

But this is constructed like a ballet,
like a dance.

The humiliation begins.

He shoots off the wig,
which is quite unusual.

And then with one theatrical stroke
he takes all of the clothes off.

Done!
He's undressed him totally.

The bandit, the bad guy

becomes a poor victim.

He's now a sad victim. His disguise
has been removed, poor man.

"I'm God." The audience
laughed a lot when he said that.

There was an Arab poet called Al-Hallaj

who said "I'm God" and he was killed.

He was a Sufi poet.

And when his blood was spilled
on the floor, it formed the word God.

When he said "I'm God",
he didn't mean he was God,

he meant God spoke through him.

In my film, I eliminated
the concept of good and evil.

The bandits redeem themselves,
or the good guys become bad.

There is no clear distinction
between good and evil.

That is an American sickness.

All the American film books say,

"In the first ten pages of the script,
you must introduce the bad guy."

It's all based on a bad guy.

The "bad guy" is a mere abstraction,
nobody is absolutely bad.

And if there is someone absolutely evil,
we're all to blame for their existence.

That gunshot was very thought out.

I told them to use cottage cheese,
so it would look like a brain exploding.

In that time, things were not so bloody.
All the blood and gore came later.

The child is jealous
and wants to separate them.

The father must choose.

The child says, "Her or me."

One of the scenes on the horse
was wildly imitated.

First we see her behind him,
and then she is in front of him.

I saw this love scene on a horse
in many films afterwards.

This is the end of another episode.

Now El Topo knows love.

He was the assassin, the outlaw,
the killer of the father,

but now he will know love.

Since this woman was so high,

I grounded her
through her discovery of nature.

It was a real life experience.

She's not an actress,
she is just a person.

I relate him
to the biblical character Moses.

He goes to the desert,
gets water from the stones.

He tums sour water sweet.

Those are all the miracles
performed by Moses.

This is not my voice. For El Topo
I got an actor to dub me.

I needed a voice
that was deeper than mine.

Everyone has been dubbed in this film.

As I've said, she was dubbed
by a 50-year-old woman.

The actor who dubbed me
had a Mexican accent.

That's why I used him.

A woman in black that appears later on
was dubbed by a 20-year-old boy.

My premise is
that film is not realistic.

Film is a work of art.

If I have the possibility of changing
the voices, why not use it?

It's another expressive tool.

So I changed the voices
as an artistic technique.

I did it in Fando y Lis,
I did it in El Topo, in Holy Mountain.

And I did it in Santa Sangre as well.

To me, the voice is another world
that is added to the visual world.

It's very important.

She tries to find food,
but she can't.

I'm trying to imply that she is frigid.
She is a frigid woman.

Around the time of El Topo
I had discovered Godard.

I really liked his Pierrot le fou.

I won't say it influenced me,
but it had an effect on this scene,

when she says,
"Nothing, nothing, nothing."

This scene
might make us think about Godard.

But I am nothing like Godard.
He is a great intellectual and I'm not.

Godard has one testicle, I have three.

Those three are intellect,
emotion, and libido.

He teaches her...

He teaches her
how to perform miracles.

She doesn't know how. She thinks
the world holds nothing for her.

She is dependent on him.
She thinks the world is a void.

El Topo will have to instruct her,
but he has to do so with violence,

because she respects power

and enjoys humiliation,
just as with the General.

This rape was authentic.
I really hit her.

It's all real.

It looks less spectacular
than a choreographed one.

I tore those clothes for real
and that's why it was harder to do.

That was my time of chauvinism.

Now I've changed.
I found a woman who has completely...

...tamed me.

In those days,
my vision of women was different.

I built the stone like a phallus.

I always said it was a portrait
of my sex.

I said, "Short but thick."

20,000 years ago, the female goddess
was kicked out of religion

and the hunters introduced
the male god.

It's been 5,000 years
since the Bible has reigned

where the woman
is considered a demon,

starting with Eve... and Lilith.

Women have to stop playing

those four parts
that they have been given -

whore, mother, saint and dumb.

That was not really a special effect.

I just shot late in the day
and used a firecracker.

I copied John Wayne's suit. I thought,
"Two cripples make one John Wayne."

All masters represent something.
They differ on scale from more to less.

The first master has a tower,

the second master
has just a covered cart.

The third master
has a small animal corral,

and the last master has only a net
for hunting butterflies,

because he has given everything away.

During that time I had a fantasy,

that came from Antonin Artaud
and Surrealism.

The fantasy that film was art,
the greatest art that could ever exist.

I used to ask
"Why is it acceptable in literature

"to have the gospels, the sutra,

"and why can't film be as important
as a sutra, or a sacred text?"

Why not?

So I used Christian symbols,
Hindu symbols...

I used all kinds of symbols.

Not as openly as in Holy Mountain,
but hidden.

I needed to study
to do these kind of films.

I wanted to make sacred cinema,

so I started to study
oriental philosophy -

Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan,

Persian, Egyptian, Kabbalah...

Alchemy as well... So many things
that I studied and that I'm still studying.

I am still a student.

It took a lot of work for this couple
to climb that ladder.

How they hated each other, those two.

The one with no arms used to say
to the other, "I'm going to kick you,"

and the one with no legs said,
"I'll punch you."

They fought like that.

But in the movie they were a unit
and it was wonderful.

Many people live divided in two.

From the waist up they're one person

and from the waist down
they're another.

The blind master is revered in Japan -

for instance Zatoichi, the blind samurai.

It means the inner gaze.

He teaches El Topo to meditate.

As I child I was interested in religion,

because my father
was violently atheist.

Whenever anybody gave me
medallions with the virgin,

or six point stars,

or an Islamic symbol,
he would throw it in the toilet.

He would pull the chain and say,
"God doesn't exist, God doesn't exist.

"You die, you rot and it's over."

I was five years old.
He traumatized me.

So I was desperately looking
for a metaphysical aspirin

that would take the anguish of dying
away from me.

I tried every method and every religion
in my search for solace.

I studied all of them.

A non-actor plays this master.

An actor couldn't have played this part.
I needed someone genuine.

So I found the drummer
of a Mexican rock band,

who was very beautiful,
very clean and spiritual.

This scene addresses
the confrontation

between the western barbarism

symbolized by El Topo
in his leather suit,

and an almost naked, clean, true man.

We must remember that
these masters' weaknesses

are El Topo's virtues.

El Topo is the fifth master
but he doesn't know it.

These masters are incomplete.

El Topo will make them complete.
Do you understand?

He sets the first master up
and the masters falls in the trap.

The master is wonderful,
but he is too trusting.

And El Topo is not.

He will absorb the master,
but will also absorb his weakness.

Because, deep down, he is the master.

The woman in black
is El Topo's alter ego.

His feminine side.

I had studied the psychoanalyst Jung.

He said that every man has an anima,
a feminine soul.

I applied this theory here.

The unknown woman a man dreams of
is his anima, his hidden feminine side.

The unknown man a woman dreams of
is the animus, her masculine side.

I have a different theory.

I believe that each and every one of us
has an anima and an animus,

two unknown parts -
masculinity and femininity.

I think that in our society we don't know
what a man or a woman is.

That's lost, because it's a paternalistic
society where only men count.

And if only men count,
a man is not a man,

because there are no women
in his mind.

But he's not a woman either.
He has no anima.

Neither animus nor anima.

In order to have
an animus and an anima,

we have to develop both
our masculine and feminine side.

This would correspond with what
in China is called the yin and the yang.

The women are falling in love
with each other.

I believed that when a woman
fell in love with a man,

she fell in love
with the man's feminine side.

That's what I thought then.

She gives her a mirror
to make her fall in love with herself.

She exploits her narcissism.

Now she finds herself attractive
and recognizes herself as a woman.

We all have narcissism in our core.

When narcissism is very developed,

the person is seduced by being loved.

"Do you love me?
Then I love you."

Generally when a man wants
to seduce a woman, he tells her,

"You have such lovely eyes,
you are so beautiful, I love you so."

So the woman says,
"This man loves me, so I love him."

It's the seduction.

Women developed bodily narcissism

because the paternalistic society
took her out from the spiritual domain

and placed her in the physical one.

So women developed
a physical narcissism.

To have any value she has to show off
her breasts, her ass, her hair...

Women massage
men's mental narcissism.

"I admire you," she says,
"You're brave, smart, and strong."

It's another kind of narcissism.

I deal with all of this in El Topo.

We see for the first time
a maternal character in the film.

El Topo fought the father.

He killed the father.

This is the first maternal character
he will meet.

This master is not Hindu, she is a Sufi,

and comes from
the school of Gurdjieff.

She is an Islamist,
and reads the tarot.

This woman is a bit like the gypsies
in central Europe,

Turkey and Persia.

I have him cross a river, a swamp,
to access another world.

You always enter another world

by going through a door,
by crossing a river.

He is going to enter another dimension.

The second master is the goldsmith...

The Sufis work with their hands.

They fabricate objects,
they make shoes.

They work with ordinary life,
they are goldsmiths.

This guy was a great theater director

called Juan José Gurrola.

We were rivals, but became friends
because I gave him a part in the film.

I placed him next to the lion,
that's a real lion.

In cinema, I cannot create an idea.
It has to come to me.

I plant seeds in my unconscious,
go to sleep, and then images emerge.

I don't have ideas. I wait for them to appear.
It's a different approach.

It's like the thirsty explorer
in the desert

imploring the heavens for a little rain.

At night, I plead
for my unconscious to work

so I can have the idea that I need
the next day. And they come.

What's the difference
between what I do

and what commercial artists do?

In order to guarantee their investments,
commercial artists look for a market.

"Let's make a film
that satisfies the taste

"of this social sector, of this nation.

"Let's give them the product they want,

"so let's have some sneak previews

"and we'll make changes
according to the imbeciles' opinions."

40, 50, 60 imbeciles can change
the ending of a movie,

because their vulgar taste
must be satisfied.

Commercial artists find an audience
that already exists.

There is another attitude,
the attitude of a true creator,

who little by little
creates his own audience.

Through the years, he imposes his way
and creates his audience.

Patience, perseverance, poverty.
That's what you need.

Patience, perseverance,
poverty, honesty, authenticity.

It's said that in film, opinions are
like assholes - everybody has one.

Everybody shits feces and ideas.

You must ignore them.

When you make a film, you don't have
to listen to anybody's opinion.

Not even that of the audience.

A filmmaker has to do what he feels,
no matter what.

Even if people leave the theater.

Even today there are always three
or four people who walk out of my films.

They can't take them.

I don't care,
I've done what I wanted to do.

Time will tell if what I did
has value or not.

He is very mystical. "I destroy myself
to encounter the divine mother."

It's very mystical. Now he understands
the love for a mother.

Before this, he had only known
the relationship with his father.

He is quoting from the Bible,
from Ecclesiastes.

This master is perfect,
he has only one weakness -

the love for his mother.

The master gives El Topo a gift
that plays a role in saving his life.

Each master gives El Topo a gift
that contributes to his success.

Just as an anecdote,
I designed that chair there.

You don't get to see it much,
but I enjoyed designing it.

It is the T of "Tarot".

I dubbed the mothers voice
with a bird's cry.

She screams like a real bird.

El Topo gets rid of his revolver.

He is disgusted with himself
for what he has done.

He is evolving.

I had to divide the film into chapters

because they wouldn't let me make
feature films in Mexico, only shorts.

I had to divide it into shorts, a different category.
That's why there are four title sequences.

I'm going to be vulgar here -
I pissed on the unions.

I said, "No union is going to forbid
an artist to express himself,

"and I'll shoot without permits."

I shot the desert sequences
without permits.

I went to the desert
with eight crewmembers,

and shot for three or four weeks
at an affordable price.

Then the union came and made me hire
100 useless workers

that spent the day eating,
getting drunk and not doing any work.

In my time there was a union
of old directors

that wouldn't give young people
the authorization to direct.

They kept us waiting forever.

After I fought against them
and shot my film,

playing the "it's not a feature,
it's four shorts" trick,

everybody started
to make "four shorts" films.

The young filmmakers got their chance

and the New Mexican Cinema
was born.

I was very revolutionary
and I faced the country.

Now they love me and thank me.

When the rabbit guides him,
it is like Alice in Wonderland.

This is a reminder that
we are watching a fairy tale,

not a historic film.

We are in a dream.

Rabbits symbolize reproduction, life.

In this case, they represent simplicity.

The simplicity of life, the Eros.

A simple life that reproduces itself
without a problem.

In real life, this master was
a Mexican antiques salesman.

He represents the Aztec,
the Mayan, the pre-Columbian.

He is very delicate.

Normally, when a Mexican character
appears in an American film,

he plays the funny one,
the buffoon, the bandit.

I did the opposite here,
the Mexican is the wise man.

I was inspired by Confucius.

When Confucius the wise man
listened to somebody play music,

he was able to tell
everything about that person.

That's why the master and El Topo
learn about each other through music.

I invented many different methods

to compose the music for El Topo.

Sometimes, I would take a Beethoven
music sheet and cut it in little pieces.

Then I would randomly
assemble them back together,

Another method -
I'd give a note to 14 friends

who came to see me
from different parts of the city.

In the order that they arrived,
I would write down the notes.

I would get a musician

to play that melody to me
on the flute.

Then I'd say, "Change this and that."
I would make changes by ear.

There is something in this scene

that I still regret
and it causes me pain.

I killed two birds in front of the camera.

Every time I watch this scene, I suffer,

and I realize that I was not

as enlightened as I thought I was.

Poor little birds.

I would never do that again.

But at that time I thought cinema
was sacred and required sacrifices.

I thought death had to play a role,
like in a sacred sacrifice in a temple.

I sacrificed those animals
with religious fervor.

But now when I think about those
ancient temples,

about how many animals
were sacrificed there...

It's terrible.

El Topo aims at the heart,
which is the master's weakness.

The master's weakness is his
unconditional love for the Universe.

Now El Topo knows guilt.

That's why he suffers after killing him.

He realizes what he's done.

The rabbits started to die,
because of the heat.

I could not eat rabbit again in my life
after this... I still can't.

It's been 30 years and I haven't touched
a dish with rabbit in it.

This scene was cut in England.

They told me that he couldn't wipe
his hands on a woman's breast.

I'm fed up with the censorship
against the violence in my films.

Everybody sees violence every day
in the news on TV.

But when they go to see art,
they want everything to be pretty, peaceful.

There is such a thing
as a sacred violence.

Or nature's violence -

tsunamis, earthquakes, gales...

Labor is violent - the child is born
in the middle of blood.

When I showed blood in El Topo,
I wanted to portray the vital forces.

This woman is not an actress.

I met her on a plane,
she was a flight attendant.

I offered her a part in my film.
I picked my actors here and there.

I found this one on a plane.
She is a Mexican beauty.

This is the Taoist master.

He has no true weapon,
only a rusty revolver.

This Mexican man was a great actor,
but he was an alcoholic.

In the morning he drank a bottle of tequila.
A whole liter for breakfast.

He was very famous,
but became an alcoholic.

He died after this film.

I was part of the poetry scene in Chile
with the surrealist group.

Just like the tarot has four symbols...

The cups,
that represent the emotional life,

the swords, the intellectual life,
the wands, the sexual life,

and the pentacles,
that represent the material life.

I had four poets as my masters.

The heart, the emotional life,
Pablo Neruda.

The Earth and the female,
Gabriela Mistral.

The sexual aspect, Pablo de Rokha,
a sort of gangster of poetry.

And Vicente Huidobro,
pure intelligence.

Those were my four great teachers
of poetry.

That's probably why
there are four masters in El Topo.

Later in my life
I chose Gurdjieff as a master,

and then a Zen master,
a Japanese monk that came to Mexico

and with whom I spent five years.
His name was Ejo Takata.

Afterwards I did psychoanalysis
with Erich Fromm.

I learned a lot from him.
And then I embarked on...

on a profound search
that took me to Jung.

I was always on the lookout
for male and female masters.

I learned a lot from a surrealist painter
called Leonora Carrington.

I got in touch with Leonora

because my master Ejo Takata
told me,

"You think that the mind and the heart
should be empty, but you are wrong.

"Empty mind, full heart.

"You haven't worked out your problems
with the Mother Goddess,

"that's why you should meet Leonora,
who is a surrealist master."

So went to see Leonora

and I learnt what pure art was.

She was the first to teach me
to read the Tarot.

That construction was made
out of toothpicks.

There you can see
the son with his mother.

The other master is covered in honey.

The master is covered
in real honey.

To me, honey and bees symbolize
the divine word.

They're sacred symbols.

El Topo loses his face.

He is no longer himself.

He has fallen to the bottom
of the abyss...

In this octagon, he is trying to break
through his psychological boundaries.

He wants to be free from himself.

He feels like a prisoner
of his own mental limits.

How do I get out?

The sacrificed lamb is Christ,
a direct link to Christ.

And now it opens.
His limitations are gone.

He throws a bird into the air.

The bird is an alchemic symbol.

He moves towards spirituality.

He feels compassion for her.

I decided to film on that bridge,

despite the fact
that it was barely standing.

It was really dangerous to walk on it.

At any moment the wooden slats
could break.

Finding that bridge was a divine gift.

It was part of an abandoned mine,
everything was rotten.

Look at how I get on the bridge,
over an abyss.

It was like being in a trance.

I usually did one or two takes,
hardly ever three.

First of all, we didn't have the time
or the money,

and secondly, we all had such intensity,
we were all in such a trance,

that we didn't need to shoot more.

Also at the time, you couldn't see
the material on a video monitor.

You had to have faith. You would
ask the DP, "Was it good or bad,"

and the DP would say, "It was good"
or, "I need to do it again."

It was up to him, not me.

There was no way to check.

I shot that with a telephoto lens
so I could move forward without editing.

I keep walking... but the shot works
because of the telephoto.

She will give him the wounds of Christ.

He doesn't fight back.

She will shoot him in both hands,
in both feet

and, finally, in his side.

The five wounds of Christ.

I eliminated shadows
and night from this film.

I wanted the light to come from
the characters. I eliminated the colors.

There's just the color of the earth,
the color of the sky, some plants,

and all the characters in black,
beige, brown,

so the blood would be there
at all times.

The only color is blood.
That's why I used so much blood.

I must say that this image
caused a great stir.

It always got big applause
in the theater.

Andy Warhol loved it...

I don't think that cinema
is a portrait of reality.

Maybe that's why I like to show
everything that is strange,

everything that is bizarre,
everything that is monstrous.

Everything that is different.

A dwarf is different, a giant is different,

and a cripple is different.

This fascination with the monstrous,
the different, goes back a long way.

I's rooted
in the Spanish artistic tradition.

Velazquez, Goya, Picasso,

showed monsters in their paintings.

I am part of that tradition.

He has been asleep
for 100 years maybe...

He has left his selfish world
and now is reborn into the social world.

Others appear, they have deified him.

He has been turned into an icon
by the indigents.

He has incorporated the four masters.

Life is continuous evolution,
constant mutation.

Art used to bother me
because the characters didn't change.

Oedipus had a fixed personality
until the end of the play.

The same thing with Hamlet.

It's inconceivable that Hamlet
begins the play filled with doubts

and then ends up
as an enlightened monk.

There is no character development.

I set out to fix that.

"The characters," I said to myself,
"can change, can evolve,

"and they actually should."
There must be a spiritual mutation.

In the search for spiritual values,

such as compassion
and enlightenment,

those values that El Topo will achieve,

there are three different ways.

One way is by studying, reading,
rereading and studying again.

You pray until you find enlightenment.

Another way is by illumination.

By instant illumination.

An explosion occurs inside your mind
and you suddenly understand.

And the third way is by receiving
guidance from a benevolent person.

Here he learns about poverty
and deprivation.

He's sensitive to others.

He's been through his mystical phase
and got in touch with his spirit

to get to the social world.

He now thinks,
"Nothing for me that is not for others.

"What I give, I give to myself.

"And what I don't give,
I take away from myself."

That is his mentality now.

The people in Africa who don't have
anything to eat are prisoners.

Poor people are in a prison...
An economic prison.

She has a tree of life on her chest.

This is a real shaman
that wanted to act.

For money of course.
Shamans need money...

But she is a real one.

All we changed was her hair.

That insect tasted horrible.

It smelled awful.
It was bitter.

That reaction is for real.

This is a shamanic experience.

Usually, since man
is a prisoner of his intellect,

the shaman gives him
some psychotropic drug,

like peyote, for instance...

When I see the body I had then,
so healthy...

The body changes so much.

It is like a river,
it changes with time.

I have nothing left from that body.

Every seven years the cells renewed.

This helped me get over my fetishism.

I was terrified of losing my hair.

When she shaved me, I found myself.

It was a sacred ceremony.

While I record this commentary,

I am a 75-year-old gentleman
with grey hair.

I see myself on the screen, acting,
and it's not me...

But perhaps I was there next to that kid,
saying, "You're doing fine, son."

The character on the screen
is like my son.

Poor guy, I pity him,
trying to find himself.

Here I'm carrying the dwarf.

And earlier the man with no arms
carried the man with arms.

That's because I never had
any physical contact with my father.

For whatever reason he didn't love me
and never touched me.

Once when I was child, we were going
to the beach and the bus broke down.

He had to carry me for miles
on his back.

I was five or six years old,

and I traveled
for many miles on my father's back.

I never forgot that.

It was the only physical contact
I ever had with my father.

I used the symbol of the eye
and the triangle

because it's the symbol of God

and it's also on the dollar bill,
a Masonic symbol.

It can also represent
the state's surveillance...

The husbands are buying a prostitute.

I used a real prostitute from Monterrey.

The women are buying slaves.
They are upper class ladies.

Here I address morals and society.

The husbands hide in a whorehouse

in the basement of a café.

It took me hours to film
the shot coming up.

This is a very complex shot.

It's a sequence shot.

A circle of horses.

After I made El Topo,

Leone invited me
for dinner several times.

He was curious to know
how I'd done things,

what equipment I'd used.

Leone always used sophisticated
equipment and spent millions.

I replied, "Just an Arriflex camera."

"But how did you do that crane shot?"
"Well, I got on top of some chairs."

El Topo wants to show the dwarf
the wonders of the big city,

but the wonders of the big city
are a horror.

I myself had the experience
of being displaced.

I lived in a small town, Tocopilla,
until I was nine years old.

I didn't know more
than four or five streets.

I lived happily
in my own personal paradise.

Until my father said,

"We're going to the capital.
Your sister has to study."

I was thrown into a city
that smelled like gas,

in a horrible pension,
without friends...

Without a home.

El Topo has become...
He is a new person.

He comes to entertain the children.
He is some sort of beggar.

We are going to see the underwear
I wore throughout the film -

silk underwear.

There it is.
He is going to show it.

I was very influenced
by Erich von Stroheim,

who was kicked out of Hollywood
after spending too much money on a film.

He had created
a wonderful army of soldiers.

They were all wearing silk underwear
under their clothes.

People asked him why spend so much
on something nobody sees.

Stroheim replied, "But they can feel it."

So the first thing I did in El Topo
was to design the black silk underpants.

I wore them all the time.
I was always wearing silk on the inside.

The underpants had a heart on the ass,
because El Topo was a bit of a clown.

These women were film extras.
They had never had featured roles,

but I gave them little parts in the film.

I hired them
and they really enjoyed the experience.

They had never done this before.

They had always been part
of the crowd.

It's been so many years
since I saw this film.

I'm amazed at how many beautiful
old ladies I found.

I wonder where I found them.

I find them very beautiful.
I think they're incredible.

Shakespeare said in Macbeth:

"What is beautiful is ugly,
and what is ugly is beautiful."

I had a great time
designing their costumes.

This scene is tragic and comical
at the same time.

It's terribly grotesque.

The sexual abuse of the slave,
it's funny and it's tragic.

I shot El Topo
with only 400,000 dollars.

It wasn't much, even back then.

What I did was to follow in the tracks
of American films being shot in Mexico.

Peckinpah had just shot
The Wild Bunch and I used his sets.

I used this set that I found
in the middle of the desert.

The Americans had shot
The Law West of Tombstone there.

I had to rush because they were
installing the electrical lines

that would go
from one city to the next

and our cowboy set was in their way.
It was a mess.

We had to bribe
the electric company workers

so they would take the day off.

I met that little woman

when she came
to see one of my plays.

She was 26 years old
and was still a virgin.

I asked her,
"Would you like to act in a film?"

She lived with her aunts,

she knew how to play the piano,
and was very isolated.

"Of course," she said,
and she took this role.

She was very beautiful.

The assistant cameraman
fell in love with her.

She experienced her first love.

I had forbidden the use of make-up.

One day, Jacqueline
arrived wearing make-up.

I said, "We are shooting.
What are you doing wearing make-up?"

I ordered her to wash her face.

Afterwards I realized she wore the make-up
to seduce the assistant cameraman.

He is asking himself,
"Does this town deserve to be saved?"

Initially, he wanted to save the town.

But now he just finds horror.

El Topo is hired
to clean the jail latrines.

He hits rock bottom here.

But he is humble, he has become
a humble being and he accepts his fate.

This is what the Zen monks do
in the monastery.

They send the novices
to clean the bathrooms.

I was revolutionary.

I played with the macho stereotype
of sheriffs

by turning them homosexual.

The guy in green, the sheriff,
José Antonio Alcaraz,

was a homosexual musician
and a music critic

who came to act in the film with his lover.
They acted together.

When I was asked,
"Who are you making the movie for?"

I would answer,
"I'm making this movie for the world."

They would say, "Nobody has crossed
the barrier of the nopal."

The nopal is a type of cactus.

Mexican films never reach overseas.
They said I was crazy,

because this film was not going to be
understood by the Mexicans

and nobody overseas
was going to buy it or watch it.

"Crazy" was the nicest thing
they called me.

I didn't receive any money from
the government, like other filmmakers.

I didn't have any money myself.
It cost 400,000 dollars in cheques.

Viskin, the swindler, paid for everything
with post-dated cheques.

We had nothing.

By the end of the shooting
we had a debt of 400,000 dollars.

When we came to America
to sell the film, Viskin was fat.

But he started losing one kilo a day.

He ended up skinny
because we couldn't sell the film,

and if he returned to Mexico,
he would have to go to jail.

Luckily we sold it
and the rest is history.

I found this boy
in a vegetarian restaurant.

He was a Canadian painter
that happened to be in Mexico.

I asked him, "Do you want to act
in my film and play the part of my son?"

He said "Yes!"
and there he is.

I hired him
because he looked like me.

The guy who plays the part
of the old priest

was the director and choreographer
of the Blanquita Theater in Mexico,

where women danced half naked.

I thought he embodied that spirit

and that it would show through
when he played the priest.

His name was Julián de Meriche.

They are going to play
Russian roulette.

In church.

It's like a game.

The old priest uses dishonesty

and the new priest... uses the truth.

That is why the old priest uses blanks
and the young priest uses bullets.

The woman we are about to see
was my wife at that time, Valerie.

Sometimes I cast crewmembers
as characters in the film.

I worked with members of my family

because I loved them very much
and they were a part of my world.

I didn't want to work with known actors,

because when you see
a famous actor,

you don't see the character.

You only see the actor.
You are at the mercy of the star's ego.

The "star" will be the cinema's demise.

The actors pose a terrible problem.

Because of celebrities,
cinema is what it is nowadays.

I'm very happy that movies with
unknown actors are coming out now.

The "star" arrives with his ego
and demands changes,

certain shots, certain lights,
and demands money.

Their demands eat up the budget.

Money should go towards production values,
not in the celebrities' pockets.

They transform cinema
into simple entertainment.

The director loses his freedom.
Celebrities are an illness.

They have turned cinema
into a business.

In commercial cinema, that's not a problem.
But it is in artistic cinema.

Since I made films outside the industry,

I used people I knew,
non-actors, my family,

anyone who would not demand
or put restrictions on me.

No way, you can't demand
anything from me!

A director must follow his vision,
not pay homage to somebody's ego.

Audiences expect an adult to die,
never a child.

I challenged those assumptions
and conventions

by killing the child.

After the child's sacrifice,
this hypocritical religion is doomed.

He is searching for authenticity.

He is like his father, like El Topo.

When he takes out this symbol,
the true religion appears, the cross.

I used a black and white cross,
symbolizing the yin and the yang.

I knew how to do all these steps,
but I did them badly

because El Topo is not a dancer.

These are real prostitutes
that we brought from the city.

You can see that they are very soft.

For Jacqueline, it was an intense
experience to get undressed,

to take off her clothes
and reveal her breasts.

It wasn't just about acting.

It was a way for her
to learn to accept and love her body.

Like a normal human being.

The character played by the woman
I found in the street

was my ideal woman.

She was everything I wanted.
I wanted women to be my victims.

I was a bit like the General, like a baby
that is waiting for his mother to arrive.

I never really had a mother,
a mother who would caress me.

So at first, I am the General,
a baby waiting for his mother.

As soon as I get dressed,
I take power and humiliate her.

And then I want to show her off,
so other men will want her and so on.

Later on, I depict her
as an ambitious woman,

who forces him to do things
he doesn't want to do.

Finally, she is a traitor
who abandons him.

It all came from the bitterness
I had inside me.

Later, when El Topo is reborn,
he meets the perfect woman, a dwarf.

He has a child with her
and builds a life with her.

But... why a dwarf?

Couldn't I have found a woman
who was not a dwarf?

As I said earlier, I like monsters,
people who are different.

But you could state that the solution
I came up with is not the perfect one.

Afterwards, in Holy Mountain

I featured women who acted
amongst the heroes.

Everyone was equal.

And in Santa Sangre,
a woman saves the main character.

I made progress with time.

I didn't know
I was such a good actor.

I never thought of myself as an actor.

But I was really feeling that.

At any given moment
I may be a painter,

at another moment I'm a musician,
at another, a filmmaker,

then a poet, then a novelist, etcetera.

But everything comes from a core
that I call the essential being.

The consciousness
looks for its source, for its origin.

Inside us dwells the source
of eternal life,

the life source of the universe.

We call it dark energy,
although it's full of light.

But since we don't understand it,
we call it dark.

If you open yourself to this energy,
it will guide you.

When I shot El Topo,
I was in a state of near holiness.

I wanted to express what I was learning
from Zen meditation,

and at the same time,
to thrive as an artist.

I had great ambitions.

Later on in my life,
I became interested in other pursuits,

and I no longer enjoyed
watching the film. I lost interest in it.

I had seen it so many times,
that it no longer held any joy for me.

Watching the film, today, after so many years,
I'm experiencing great joy.

It's the first time that I like it.

I'm no longer the one who directed it,
it no longer upsets me.

It's just a film.

It's ingenious.

I set out to do things
that no one had done before.

It's well shot, well acted.

I enjoy watching it. I don't suffer
when I see the younger me.

That's what I like the most.

I'm happy to be what I am...

I wouldn't trade myself for that guy.

I went to France because
when I saw Children of Paradise,

they told me that a great mime
lived there.

I wanted to compare myself with him.

The first time that I ran into Marceau,
we had a heated discussion

about what pantomime should be.

I felt I was much better than him,

but quickly I realized that Marceau was
a genius of the pantomime and I wasn't.

Nevertheless, I also realized that I was
more intelligent than Marceau.

I believe that good actors
are never very intelligent.

They are intuitive,
they have other qualities.

I've been reading all my life,
since I was five years old,

and back then
I was reading the existentialists,

the non-semantic authors, etcetera.

So I decided to help Marceau
by putting my intellect

at the service of his genius.

I started to write metaphysical
pantomimes for him and he accepted.

First I wrote The Cage,
about a person who is locked

in an endless bunch of crystal cages.

I also wrote The Mask Maker

that tells the story of a man
who makes a smiling mask

and he can't get rid of it
when he is sad.

The mask is stuck to his face.

I also wrote The Heart Eater,

which was about a man
that eats people's hearts

and then becomes the person
whose hearts he eats.

This scene is based...

This sequence about the tunnel
is based on an old Zen tale

that I discovered in a book
by Paul Reps

called Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.

This is based on a story
I found in that book.

In the story,
a monk meets a young man

who wants to kill him
to avenge his father's death.

The monk had been a killer
earlier in his life.

The young man wants to kill him.

The monk says,

"Wait until I'm done with the tunnel

"that will be of a great help
for this community."

The young man helps him.

Once they have finished building the tunnel,
the monk says, "Kill me now."

But the young man replies,
"I can't kill my master."

The bandages emphasize the idea
that they were monsters.

It's as if the monsters
were in a hospital.

There are all sorts of monsters.

I use the bandages
to make them look worse.

I sent my assistants
to look for monsters

on the outskirts of Monterrey.

Nobody sees them,
but they are everywhere.

If you walk around New York,
you will to find them there, too!

You try not to see them.

They are happy to act.
It gives their life meaning.

They are working on a film,

they are making money
and they are acting.

It's a great joy for them.

Not one of those cripples was an actor.

I was only able to pay
for a few of them.

If I were to make this film now
with a bigger budget,

I would hire hundreds of monsters.

I couldn't do the explosions

with special effects and so on.

So we winged it, I threw pieces
of watermelon at the bodies.

I used the moment of the shot

when the bits of watermelon
hit the bodies,

thus creating the effect
of bullets entering a body.

When I put a pillow under Jacqueline's shirt
to make her look pregnant,

she started crying.
She said, "I'll never be a mother."

But when the film was over,
she found a man

and gave birth to a beautiful girl
called Lisarin,

who works in cinema
and is the same height as her mother.

Later on Jacqueline studied Zen

and became a Zen master.

He comes running,
he's afraid of them getting killed.

I ran for a kilometer in that scene.

I used charges of powder
inside the suit.

I made them explode one by one.

He overcomes death.
The character overcomes death.

It's unreal, a fairytale...

El Topo was the first film to be
premiered without inviting the critics.

Allen Douglas, the hippie
who distributed the film, suggested,

"First let's have an audience watch it
before the critics can destroy it."

So we premiered it
without inviting a single critic,

and what was called
the "Midnight Mass" was formed.

A New York Times critic
destroyed El Topo.

The audience reaction was so strong,
they sent so many complaints,

that the newspaper had to publish
a full-page positive review.

It was the first time that the newspaper
contradicted itself.

My grandfather died from burns
caused by an oil lamp.

My mother deified my grandfather.

I thought I didn't care about my mother,

but I gave myself the same death
as my grandfather.

Incredible, there I am trying to be
the mythic hero

that my mother worshipped
her entire life.

Life no longer has any meaning for him.

So it's over.

I got a real skeleton,
covered it with steaks and burnt it.

This is a skeleton covered with steaks
that I burnt to make it look more real.

They head off into their new life.

The grave is covered by bees.

In other words,
since he is now a Holy man,

the bees build their hive
on top of his grave.

His efforts were not in vain.

He is feeding the world with his corpse.

His life had meant something.

It's a form of immortality.

The great diseases in current cinema
are first of all, the actors.

Secondly, the distributors,
the theater owners.

These theater owners are idiots

who want all the movies to last
an hour and a half.

They want them to be PG.

What I intend to do in my next film,
if God grants me a long life,

because I am a little old,

I will make a film that can
be projected on the walls of the streets.

I will take film out of the theaters,

because theaters
are the great obstacle.

With the new techniques

we'll be able to project on any wall,
on any street,

and we will be able to make films
that don't necessarily make a profit

but just pay for themselves.

For the last 30 years,
I've been giving tarot readings for free.

Likewise, I can make a movie
where I won't earn a profit.

I can do that.
And I will try to,

because as long as films
are shown in theaters,

the empire of the
theater owners will prevail.

They will demand this and the other.
They want profitability.

Now if you make artistic films,
you have to show them in the street,

in museums, in festivals,

at home...

We must liberate cinema,
because if we don't,

it will continue to be
what it is nowadays - a catastrophe.