Luis Bunuel - Genius of Surrealistic Cinema

Luis Bunuel

1900-1983

In Woody Allen’s new movie Midnight in Paris (2011), a modern-day screenwriter named Gil (Owen Wilson) finds himself in 1920’s Paris among the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein.  In one scene, Gil meets the great surrealists Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, and Luis Buñuel.  Gil tells Buñuel his idea for a screenplay about a bunch of partygoers who can’t leave the room.  Buñuel asks “what’s keeping them in the room?”  “Nothing”, says Gil.  “I don’t understand,” replies Buñuel.  The plot Gil is pitching is that of Buñuel’s 1962 surrealistic masterpiece The Exterminating Angel.  Judging by the complete lack of laughter in the theatre, I don’t think many in the audience got the joke.  The Internet has dozens of articles and post with titles like ‘Decoding Midnight in Paris’ offering crib notes on the movie, particularly the  Buñuel scene (although the NY Times reviewer referenced the wrong movie but corrected himself the next day).  While most folks know Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Luis Buñuel, regrettably, has fallen off the public’s radar.  Nevertheless, Luis Buñuel is one of the great international filmmakers alongside Bergman, Fellini, Truffaut, and Kurosawa.

Oh, Jeez.  Here it comes.  Un Chien Andalou

Luis Buñuel was born in Calando, Spain in 1900 (which is convenient for tracking his age by his movies’ release dates).  He was educated at the University of Madrid where he met painter Salvador Dalí.  In 1925, Buñuel moved to Paris where he and Dalí made a short film entitled Un Chien Andalou (1929), a surrealistic movie that includes several shocking images, including a razor slicing an eyeball.  When the partnership ended during the making of L’Age D’Or (1930), Buñuel returned to Spain. In the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, his anti-fascist sentiments got him exiled to America.  He spent almost a decade dubbing Hollywood movies with Spanish.  In 1946, Buñuel moved to Mexico and returned to the director’s chair.  Los Olvidados (1950) earned Buñuel an international reputation as the premier Spanish-language director.  In Mexico, Buñuel made 20 feature films with varying degrees of surrealism but almost all with biting social and religious commentary.  Franco invited Buñuel to return to Spain in 1960 to make the film of his choice.  However, the resulting Viridiana (1961) was so controversial that Buñuel was soon back in Mexico where he made The Exterminating Angel (1962) and Simon of the Desert (1965).  Next, Buñuel made several movies in France that were huge successes around the world.  Belle de Jour (1967), starring Catherine Deneuve, was the most successful of Buñuel’s films.  Tristana (1970) The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), The Phantom of Liberty (1974), and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) ended Buñuel’s career in a blaze of critical acclaim.  Buñuel died in Mexico City in 1983 at the age of 83.

The Phantom of Liberty

Buñuel was a master of surrealism, which Webster’s defines as “the principles, ideals, or practice of producing fantastic or incongruous imagery or effects in art, literature, film, or theater by means of unnatural or irrational juxtapositions and combinations.”  Personally, I’ve always thought of surrealism as the quality that dreams have where the fantastic and bizarre seem logical and commonplace.  Un Chien Andalou is full of such imagery.  In addition to the sliced eyeball, ants crawl out of a hole in a man’s palm, a woman in the middle of the street pushes a severed hand around with a stick, and a man pulls two pianos, two dead mules, two priests and the Ten Commandments across the room towards the woman he lusts after.  The entire premise of The Exterminating Angel is surreal; guests of a dinner party gather in the music room after dinner – and simply can’t leave.  There is nothing physically preventing them from leaving the room.  As the hours turn to days, the room slowly devolves into a savage competition for privacy, water, food, and sanity.  While most of Buñuel’s movies have surreal moments, he tops them all in The Phantom of Liberty which arbitrarily follows characters out of scenes into completely unrelated ones.  For example, in one scene a man is having difficulty sleeping because he is interrupted by rooster, an ostrich, and a letter-delivering postman.  When a psychologist tells him these are all just night visions, he produces the letter.  But the camera follows the psychologist’s assistant out the door to another scene and we never learn more about the letter.  In another scene, blatantly challenging our notions of social acceptability, a group of guests seat themselves around a table lined with toilets and proceed about their business.  Occasionally, guests excuse themselves and go to a private dining room to eat.

Last Supper scene in Viridiana

Buñuel was fervently anti-religion and his movies take vicious swipes the church.  In Viridiana, a gang of drunken midgets pause in a tableau of The Last Supper.  L’Age d’Or ends with an image of scalps of women on a crucifix, flapping in the breeze.  Simon of the Desert, a prophet who stands on a high column to make himself worthy of God, miraculously restores the hands of a peasant - who uses them to smack his children, telling them to get back to work.  Buñuel famously said “Thank God I’m an atheist” and was fully aware of the irony inherent in that admonition.  Later in life, he said he was not an atheist but was opposed to the guilt inflicted by the church, citing his Mexican Bus Ride (1952) in which a village lives in peace and serenity because it can’t afford a church or a priest.

As shocking and bizarre as Buñuel films are, they are also darkly humorous and entertaining.  Buñuel mercilessly lampooned the bourgeois lifestyle and mindset in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.  Belle de Jour (1967) used the discreet charms of beautiful Catherine Deneuve to advantage in this intimate story of a bourgeois housewife who becomes a prostitute by day while keeping her husband in the dark by night.  Despite all the surrealist anti-religious, anti-bourgeois trappings, Buñuel was a funny guy.  I imagine that if Woody Allen’s Gil had really told him the premise of The Exterminating Angel in 1920’s Paris, he would have gotten the joke immediately.

Question of the Day: What's your favorite Bunuel moment?