From Carnival to Urban Tactics: Visual Methods and Film Analysis in La ilusión viaja en tranvía

Métodos visuales y análisis fílmico en La ilusión viaja en tranvía

Resumo

The present article proposes a rereading of La ilusión viaja en tranvía (1953), by Luis Buñuel, from the articulation between Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of carnival (2003), Michel de Certeau’s notion of everyday practices (2000), and visual methods in qualitative research (Mannay, 2010, 2012, 2013). Its aim is to determine how the film updates the experience of urban space through a reading articulated between filmic image, urban memory, and contemporary visual record. The study begins with an initial cinematographic analysis, aimed at identifying the narrative organisation, the displacements of tram 133, and the ways in which the characters defy authority; subsequently, it re-actualises the filmic space through Pink’s walking with video technique (2007, 2023) and 360° recording, based on a situated walk through Plaza de la República and other spaces linked to the former tram mobility of Mexico City. The relationship between theory and methodology is central, since the act of walking, recording, and engaging with the cinematographic image builds a situated reading of Mexican urban memory. The film gains relevance in representing Mexican culture through everyday life, popular mobility, comedy, inequality, and the symbolic appropriation of space. The results show that the clandestine tram functions as an urban tactic and that the 360° recording reactivates historical, affective, and cultural nodes. The article contributes to studies on Mexican cinema, the city, and visual methods by proposing filmic space as a living cartography and a contemporary experience.