Here’s the transcript for an audio-only, calm, unscripted analysis of the 1975 film Leonor, directed by Juan Luis Buñuel and starring Liv Ullman, Michel Piccoli, Ornella Muti, and Antonio Ferrandis. Scroll down to read all about why I don’t think this is even a vampire movie, and what I think it is really about. Or listen here on YouTube.

The 1975 Juan Luis Buñuel film Leonor, starring Liv Ullmann, is not a vampire movie. You will see that everywhere online, that she comes back from the dead and goes around killing children at night. Hardly any of this movie takes place at night, for one thing, because there’s all this beautiful natural light in it because it’s the Middle Ages in the mountains in Spain. It’s a very beautiful-looking movie for something so terrifying.

She’s not a vampire. I don’t know what she is. She’s some kind of monkey’s paw manifestation of grief and regret, and her husband Lord Richard—I’m gonna talk about his ingratitude, which I believe is the main point of this film.

At the beginning of the movie, Leonora has already received her mortal injury, being crushed by a horse. Now, the morning that she dies, if we ignore the fact that by nightfall this guy, Lord Richard, has gone to one of his—I don’t know what you call ’em in the political or social structure they’ve got going on—he goes to this guy and says, I want your daughter at my house by nightfall, I’m gonna marry her. But ignoring that, which is sort of part of their society that I can’t judge by our standards, although I’d like to, Catherine, the new wife, is a wonderful, understanding woman who loves him. She gives him two beautiful sons.

This guy, Richard, he’s got friends that come over and drink and party with him. He’s got a trusted advisor, Thomas, who’s the smartest person in the movie. I’ll get back to that. He’s got livestock. He easily beats any bandits that come to rob him when he’s traveling around. He’s got this big stronghold. He’s got the mountains to ride around in on his horses.

It’s a nice life, and more importantly, most importantly, the plague of the Middle Ages, the bubonic plague, has not reached the mountains of Spain from the cities of Italy. But we know it’s coming.

So Richard, he doesn’t appreciate all that he has. He treats Catherine like she’s just some of the livestock, and there’s a scene that really stood out.

He’s standing in this barn, and there’s just—I think there are lambs—just as far as you can see, just so many lambs in this barn. And suddenly the camera falls on Catherine. She’s in this white light, like a saint, holding a lamb and smiling. And so what’s his response? It’s to get down on the floor and have sex with her in the barn among the lambs and all the poop and everything.

And I mean, get you somebody that’s down for that, I suppose, and maybe that’s love, but he’s got this nice life in what was a terrible time to live in, I think, and he’s not appreciative of the way that he’s been able to rebuild his life and all the blessings that he has. And he just wants Leonora back.

And there’s this stone bridge that figures prominently in a lot of scenes, and I think it’s sort of the bridge between life and death. And one day, Richard’s out alone over the bridge, left Catherine at home, and there’s a man who appears a demon, a trickster, maybe just a guy who knows more than he’s saying. And the guy says to him, you know, you’re wishing for this person back that’s nothing but bones and dust, and if you saw her, you’d be filled with revulsion. Now, kingdoms have fallen, and people haven’t been as upset as you are over this one person.

And Richard’s like, but I want her back. And the man says, well, it’s like The Wizard of Oz, basically. You had the power to bring her back all the time.

So he goes into the tomb and opens it up, and somehow she’s back, but it’s not really her.

And immediately he casts off Catherine. And at first Leonora is frightened, and the servants and the fiefs, or whatever the people, knights, whoever have to live under this guy Richard at the point of his sword, they’re afraid of her, but they hang around for a while.

And at first she’s cold, and she wants some perfume to cover up her stink. But then one day she’s out walking around, and she finds a little girl, and she starts to tell her a story about people who stayed in their houses all the time and their bellies grew fatter and fatter.

And then the little girl is dead, but we don’t see her drinking any blood. I want to make that point again. You know, this is not some genre-land vampire movie, as much as I like those.

If you’ve got Liv Ullmann, one of the greatest actresses ever to be on the silver screen, you’re gonna have a psychological movie. You’re not gonna have fangs and stakes, and that’s what this is. It’s a very psychological movie.

It’s very surreal, as you would get from the Buñuel filmmaking dynasty, but it’s not psychedelic surreal, or things just happening that don’t make sense. There’s not a lot of expository scenes. You have to kind of figure things out. People come and go, and they have conversations that would probably make more sense if you watch this over and over and analyzed it, but you don’t need someone to connect all the dots. You can take a film like this and make of it what you will.

I think there’s a couple of meanings. I think that Richard does not have gratitude for what he’s had, but I also think there’s a scene towards the beginning of the film where his friends come over and they’re drinking and having a banquet, and the camera just pulls in on this one guy’s face. We don’t know who he is, because we don’t know who most people in this movie are because it’s surreal.

He starts telling this terrible story about the way that the plague is in Milan and all the suffering, and how people don’t care about anything at all.

And then everyone at the party just gets up and they start smashing things. They’ve got a minstrel playing a lot, and they smash his lute while holding him at knifepoint. And there’s two guys that are, like, just punching a tree trunk, and one of them starts bleeding. And the Lord is fighting somebody with a sword or hitting stuff with a sword. They just trash the banquet room.

And then Thomas, the guy, the only person in the movie that’s got any sense, they put him in a box and close it up. He gets out. So he’s okay, but I just feel like that was just indicative of society breaking down, the way that society breaks down when there’s a medical crisis, like a plague.

And so the plague’s not there yet. It takes ten years to get there, and it arrives at the same time when Leonora is getting stronger and killing all these children.

And when it gets to the worst point, when Richard has lost almost everything to her and the plague, she goes from being this meek woman in a white, sort of torn-up, stained dress that she was buried in to this queen in a crimson robe, just walking around this compound and threatening everyone, including Richard.

And I feel that not only is this a movie about him not appreciating what he has, be careful what you wish for, it’s also—she’s the plague. It took ten years to get from the cities of Italy to the mountains of Spain. But now it’s here.

And the people that aren’t dead, they all leave Richard, including Thomas, the one who advocated against a doctor cutting into Leonora and bleeding her at the beginning, the one who fights with the priest about why we shouldn’t let mice run rampant in our fields, we should release snakes to kill the mice.

Thomas leaves Richard, and that’s the last bit of sense going out the door, and everything falls apart. So it goes from this pretty nice life to just chaos and destruction, and I won’t tell you the ending.

But, you know, I at the best of times don’t like looking at depictions of the Middle Ages. Because everything was terrible. But this isn’t like watching The Devils.

It’s not a test of your endurance, you know. The Devils is a great movie that I never want to see again. I recommend it a lot, but this is like a kind, gentle descent into madness, I suppose.

I mean, we’re kind of in favor of Richard until he discards Catherine. Even in the standards of his time, that would be a bit much. But, you know, I’m grateful that I don’t live in the Middle Ages, and that I have been able to decide who I got married to, and that we have modern medicine.

You might not fare too well if your horse rolled over on you, but, you know, you might. You wouldn’t have someone just cut you and have your arm bleed into a bowl. I can tell you that.

So that’s what I think that this movie is about. Leonor is a very compelling movie to me.

I bought the Blu-ray in a sale five years ago, sight unseen, just like, okay, Juan Luis Buñuel and Liv Ullmann, sign me up. And it’s been the best Blu-ray that I bought for no reason that I have in my collection, and I keep returning to it.

And I think it’s underrated, because I think it’s misunderstood. So if you get a chance to see this, see it, and be grateful for what you have. Enjoy your life as it is, because perhaps things could always be worse.

Have a good day.