Saura crafts a brilliant metaphor for the dangerous excesses of bellicose masculinity in The Hunt, his most intense and tightly constructed film. A rabbit hunt led by three veteran Nationalist soldiers on a former battle site steadily and inexplicably builds in violence and aggression with the heat of the day. Although The Hunt avoids any explicit mention of the war—following the dictates of Francist censors—its subject remains even more vivid for being unspoken. Beautifully shot in black-and-white, Saura’s masterful film is an outstanding model of poetic restraint.