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Luis Bunuel ________________________
Spain (1900-83 )
The father of cinematic Surrealism and one of the most original directors in the history of the film medium, Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education (which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both religion and subversive behaviour), and subsequently moved to Madrid to study at the university there, where his close friends included Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca. After moving to Paris, Buñuel did a variety of film-related odd jobs in Paris, including working as an assistant to director Jean Epstein. With financial assistance from his mother and creative assistance from Dali, he made his first film, the 17-minute Un Chien Andalou. In 1929, and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its shocking imagery (much of which - like the sliced eyeball at the beginning - still packs a punch even today). It made a deep impression on the Surrealist Group, who welcomed Buñuel into their ranks. The following year, sponsored by wealthy art patrons, he made his first feature, the scabrous witty and violent L'Age d'Or , which mercilessly attacked the church and the middle classes, themes that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career. That career, though, seemed almost over by the mid-1930s, as he found work increasingly hard to come by and after the Spanish Civil War he emigrated to the US where he worked for the Museum of Modern Art and as a film dubber for Warner Bros. Moving to Mexico in the late 1940s, he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention with the lacerating study of Mexican street urchins, Los Olvidados (1950), which won him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. But despite this new-found acclaim, Buñuel spent much of the next decade working on a variety of ultra-low-budget films, few of which made much impact outside Spanish-speaking countries (though many of them are well worth seeking out). But in 1961, General Franco, anxious to be seen to be supporting Spanish culture invited Buñuel back to his native country -and Bunuel promptly bit the hand that fed him by making Viridiana, which was banned in Spain on the grounds of blasphemy, though it won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. This inaugurated Buñuel's last great period when, in collaboration with producer Serge Silberman and writer Jean-Claude Carrière he made seven extraordinary late masterpieces, starting with Diary of a Chambermaid in 1964. Although far glossier and more expensive, and often featuring major stars such as Jeanne Moreau and Catherine Deneuve the films showed that even in old age Buñuel had lost none of his youthful vigour. After saying that every one of his films from Belle de Jour (1967) onwards would be his last, he finally kept his promise with That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), after which he wrote a memorable (if factually dubious) autobiography, in which he said he'd be happy to burn all the prints of all his films -a classic Surrealist gesture if ever there was one. (IMDb mini-biography by
Michael Brooke
"The Majestic
Surreal Cinema of Luis Bunuel." Chaotic Cinema, Surreal and Cult Films.
Not much about the films, but the quotations are priceless--from a fairly
comprehensive site about strange films (including the experimental films of
British director Peter Greenway, and one of my favorite "weird" films, El
Topo.
Pearse,
Gregory and Maria. Luis Buñuel's Cinema of Entrapment in the Age of
Cowardice: The Search for a Greater Truth. 1998. Interesting. Very
interesting. But can't vouch for scholastic integrity.
Luis Buñuel:
A Bibliography of Materials in the UC Berkeley Library Excellent bibliography.
Papciak, Bryan
M. "'Thank God I'm an Atheist:'
The Surrealistic Cinema of Luis Bunuel." Sync: The Regent Journal of Film
and Video. 1.1 (Winter 1993). Good overview of Bunuel's work (but
not much on Discreet Charm).
Zenner, M. C., et al. "The Surreal Feel: Luis Buñuel." Senses of Cinema. 2000. Includes brief discussion of Discreet Charm.
Jones, Julie. "The Picaro in Paris: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and the Picaresque Tradition. Journal of Film and Video 51.1 (Spring 1999): 42-56. Excellent scholarly article.
PODCAST: The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie
LEFT CLICK the iPod image on the left to listen to the lecture on your computer. (It may take several minutes for the file to load.)
If you want to down load the lecture, RIGHT CLICK the iPod image and then select either SAVE TARGET AS or SAVE LINK AS. You can put the file on your desktop, a folder or your iTunes folder. ITunes or Windows Media Player should find it when you click the file name (bunuelpodcast08).
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