The Holy Mountain

La montaña sagrada (1973)

Timing: 1:53 (113 min)

7.5/10
993

7.772/10
7954

7.7/10
52000

All about film

Video 2

Photo 76

Actors and characters

Release date

1973-11-29

Country

Mexico, United States

Production

Producciones Zohar, ABKCO Films

Genre

Drama

Budget

$750 000

Revenue

$95 858

Website

Director

Alejandro Jodorowsky

Actors

Alejandro Jodorowsky, Horacio Salinas, Zamira Saunders, Juan Ferrara, Adriana Page, Burt Kleiner, Valerie Jodorowsky, Nicky Nichols, Richard Rutowski, Luis Lomelí
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Alejandro Jodorowsky, Roberto Viskin, Allen Klein, Robert Taicher

Operator

Rafael Corkidi

Composer

Alejandro Jodorowsky

Artist

Audition

Editing

Federico Landeros
All team (22)

• Before filming began, director Alejandro Jodorowsky spent a week without sleep meditating under the guidance of a guru, and lived with the film's cast in a commune for a month.
• The lamb carcasses shown crucified on crosses in the film were borrowed from a local restaurant and, upon their return, were cooked and served to customers.
• The first ritual scene in the film depicts gestures and movements that constitute a tea ceremony. Alejandro Jodorowsky later revealed that the women in the scene were not actresses.
• The film is based on the treatise "Ascent of Mount Carmel" by the Christian mystic and reformer of the Carmelite order, Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591), and the philosophical novel "Mount Analogue: A Novel of the Art of Mountaineering, Non-Euclidean Geometry, and Symbolic Realities" by the poet and prose writer René Daumal (1908-1944).
• Alejandro Jodorowsky dreamed of filming a scene in which his characters jumped into the "infinite waters" of the ocean. The actors jumped into the ocean and immediately began to drown. Chaos ensued. While the film crew pulled the actors out of the water, no one was thinking about filming. Eventually, the director abandoned the scene altogether.
• A small octopus, purchased at a local market before filming, played the role of the tumor being removed from the neck of one of the thieves.
• The ritual scene at the beginning of the film is set to Buddhist chants. The word "Shakyamuni" means Siddhartha Gautama, i.e., a descendant of Gautama who was successful in achieving his goals.
• The film crew did not have permission to film a helicopter landing on a city street. One of the actors simply put on a police officer's uniform and stopped traffic on the street for the duration of the filming, after which the entire group hastily retreated.
• During the beheading scene, the actor dealt Alejandro Jodorowsky a genuinely serious blow, cutting his neck and nearly killing him. As the director and lead actor later recounted, he would have died if the sword had been real.
• The film is based on the treatise “Ascent of Mount Carmel” by the Christian mystic and reformer of the Carmelite Order, Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591), and the philosophical novel “Mount Analog: A Novel of Alpine Adventure, Non-Euclidean and Symbolically True” by the poet and prose writer René Daumal (1908-1944).
• Alejandro Jodorowsky dreamed of filming a scene in which his characters jump into the “infinite waters” of the ocean. The actors jumped into the ocean and immediately began to drown. Chaos ensued. While the film crew pulled the actors out of the water, no one was thinking about filming. As a result, the director abandoned the scene altogether.
• The ritual scene at the beginning of the film is accompanied by Buddhist chants. The word “Shakyamuni” means Siddhartha Gautama, i.e., a descendant of Gautama, successful in achieving his goals.