The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is a film by an artist of fresh, still developing talent, a poetic film, with a purity of style that marks it as the statement of a man of integrity, direct, uncompromised…. In fact so simple, so inevitable are the images, that you have to imagine what the conventional film treatment of the story would be to appreciate quite how daring—and how masterly—is Bunuel's naked, unadorned presentation of the simple facts. No jolly establishing sequences at Plymouth, no sentimental farewells, no pretty Polly waving a handkerchief from the jetty, not even a smashing storm sequence: just long waves rolling in to a deserted beach, and a man staggering up out of the water….

The first reels of the film are like the best kind of documentary—like Moana, with its loving, contented observation of the practical details of living. Then comes...