Luis Buñuel was born in Spain in 1900. His first two films were made in collaboration with the painter Salvador Dali and both caused an uproar on release. Un Chien Andalou in 1928 and L'Age D'Or in 1930, both displayed dreamlike sensationalist images, that were designed to shock and startle the audience. They did just that, and L'Age D'Or was banned for forty-nine years.
His roots have always been in surrealism and savaging the bourgeois and religion. His later films were less outrageous, but were always scathing. The Exterminating Angel and The Phantom of Liberty being good examples. He moved to Mexico in 1946 and became a Mexican citizen and made a lot of films there. He returned to France in his later years and made his last several films there. Even though he was over seventy-years-old, he was still at his very best. He died in Mexico in 1983 and left a trail of brilliant and unforgettable films in his wake.
Some Buñuel Quotes
"Poor workers! First they're cuckolded, and, as if that weren't enough, then they're beaten! Work's a curse, Saturno. I say to hell with the work you have to do to earn a living! That kind of work does us no honour; all it does is fill up the bellies of the pigs who exploit us. But the work you do because you like to do it, because you've heard the call, you've got a vocation - that's ennobling! We should all be able to work like that. Look at me, Saturno - I don't work. And I don't care if they hang me, I won't work! Yet I'm alive! I may live badly, but at least I don't have to work to do it!" - Luis Buñuel
"All my life I've been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence." - Luis Buñuel
"You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all, just as an intelligence without the possibility of expression is not really an intelligence. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing." - Luis Buñuel
"The bar… is an exercise in solitude. Above all else, it must be quiet, dark, very comfortable - and, contrary to modern mores, no music of any kind, no matter how faint. In sum, there should be no more than a dozen tables, and a clientele that doesn't like to talk." - Luis Buñuel
"Salvador Dali seduced many ladies, particularly American ladies, but these seductions usually consisted of stripping them naked in his apartment, frying a couple of eggs, putting them on the woman's shoulders and, without a word, showing them the door." - Luis Buñuel
"I have already recounted how, at one time, some Surrealist friends and I considered taking over a cinema full of children and screening a very daring pornographic film, Soeur Vaseline. We didn't do it, because we were afraid of the police." - Luis Buñuel
"Fortunately, somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether." - Luis Buñuel
"If you were to ask me if I'd ever had the bad luck to miss my daily cocktail, I'd have to say that I doubt it; where certain things are concerned, I plan ahead." - Luis Buñuel
"If someone were to prove to me right this minute that God, in all his luminousness, exists, it wouldn't change a single aspect of my behaviour." - Luis Buñuel
"In the name of Hypocrites, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival." - Luis Buñuel
"Frankly, despite my horror of the press, I'd love to rise from the grave every ten years or so and go buy a few newspapers." - Luis Buñuel
"God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed." - Luis Buñuel
"Give me two hours a day of activity, and I'll take the other twenty-two in dreams." - Luis Buñuel
"Tobacco and alcohol, delicious fathers of abiding friendships and fertile reveries." - Luis Buñuel
"I can only wait for the final amnesia, the one that can erase an entire life." - Luis Buñuel
"A paranoiac. . . like a poet, is born, not made." - Luis Buñuel
"Thank God I'm an atheist." - Luis Buñuel
What others have said about Buñuel
"He showed us we didn't need to be afraid of existence and the catastrophes of existence. For him, those catastrophes were lies, political lies, fascism, Franco, and the Pope." - Michel Piccoli
"He had that face... that broken boxer's nose, that gaze of his that was asymmetrical and terrible, showing brutal concentration. He loved to make jokes, but with a serious expression on his face. That was disturbing." - Claudio Isaac
"I learned the quality of silence with Buñuel, because we could sit for ten minutes without speaking, looking at each other or drinking, without a word. That's the height of friendship." - Carlos Fuentes
"He had the art of provocation, but he was so lively about it. That's what he wanted, to disturb people, make them question things and have fun at the same time." - Angela Molina
"With Luis Buñuel, it's difficult to look for the explanation, because most of the best things about him had no explanation." - Jose Bello
Un Chien Andalou (1928)
L'Age D'Or (1930)
Viridiana (1961)
This tells the story of a young religious woman who visits her seemingly kind uncle. But the uncle has an ulterior motive and desire for the woman, who reminds him of his late wife, and that leads to tragic consequences.
"One of the cinema's few major philosophical works." - Robert Vas
"An extraordinary film, a superb film." - Dilys Powell
Read the Viridiana screenplay
The Exterminating Angel (1962)
Simon of the Desert (1965)
Belle de Jour (1967)
Catherine Deneuve is stunning as the wife of a doctor who secretly begins work in a Paris brothel. There's one scene where an oriental man brings a little box into the brothel and people gaze inside. But we are never shown what is in there. It makes an odd noise like some sort of creature? Buñuel once said that he never knew what was in the box because he never looked. The ending of this one is memorable. A very accomplished Buñuel film.
"The rhythm of the writing, the colour changes, acting tempos, camera angles, the whole editing - all this is perfect. There is not one extraneous shot, nor one that is missing. Disparate elements are embraced in a self-possessed, lucidly enchanting flow." - John Simon
"Oppressively powerful. Like being buried alive in Sarah Bernhardt's dressing room." - Wilfred Sheed
"The movie understands the hypnotic intensity with which humans consider their own fantasies." - Roger Ebert
The Milky Way (1968)
This film follows two tramps on a religious pilgrimage from Paris to Spain, who meet many weird characters on the trip, who all talk about religion, including Christ himself. It has some funny scenes.
"A mere trifle wrapped in a triple cloak of befuddling obscurantism." - John Simon
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
The Phantom of Liberty (1974)
That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)
Links
Resources
Senses
of Cinema
The
Savage Poetry of Luis Bunuel
Strictly
Film School
Comprehensive
Page in Spanish
Gobierno de Aragon
Bunuel's
Obsessions
General Information, Essays
The
Surreal Feel: Luis Buñuel
Papciak,
Bryan M. ‘ “Thank God I’m an Athiest”: The Surrealistic Cinema of Luis
Bunuel’. Sync: The Regent Journal of Film & Video, 1(1), Winter 1993.
Kinder,
Marsha. ‘Hot Spots, Avatars, and Narrative Fields Forever: Bunuel’s Legacy
for New Digital Media And Interactive Database Narrative’. Film Quarterly,
Summer 2002.
Higginbotham,
Virginia. ‘Feminism and Bunuel: Points of Contact’. RLA Archive, 1989.
Santander,
Hugo N. ‘Luis Bunuel: Existential Filmmaker’, Especulo, 20, March – June
2002.
Luis
Buñuel Remembered by Jean-Claude Carrière
Luis
Buñuel's Cinema of Entrapment in the Age of Cowardice: The Search for a Greater
Truth
Love,
Lava and Lavatories by Franci Arzt
Luis
Buñuel: A Centennial Celebration @ Harvard Film Archives
Bright
Lights Film Journal: Bunuel on DVD
THE
SCREEN: 'A SHORT CONFESSION BY LUIS BUNUEL'
Luis
Buñuel, Existential Filmmaker by Hugo N. Santander
Book
Review of "An unspeakable betrayal: selected writings of Luis Buñuel"
Surreal
thing Luis Buñuel turns 100 by Chris Fujiwara
The
Incisive Eye Of Don Luis Buñuel
Canadian Film
Institute Bunuel Screenings
The
Indiscreet Charms of Luis Buñuel
Carlos
Saura's film a tribute to Luis Buñuel
Blog
Entry and the Surrealism of Bunuel
Two Radical
Filmmakers: Luis Bunuel and Dziga Vertov
Tracking
Shots: 'The Mexican Cinema of Luis Buñuel' by J. Hoberman
The
Religious Affiliation of Luis Bunuel
"Thank
God I'm an atheist:" The surrealistic cinema of Luis Bunuel
Film
151. Papers on Luis Bunuel. University of Berkeley, 1998
Reviews, Essays, on Specific Films
Un
Chien andalou by by Michael Koller
Williams,
Linda. ‘The Prologue to Un Chien Andalou: A Surrealist Film Metaphor’.
Screen.
L'Age
d'or: faux-raccord (false match) by Sophy Williams
Ruoff,
Jeffrey. ‘An Ethnographic Surrealist Film: Luis Bunuel’s Land Without
Bread’. Visual Anthropology Review, 14(1), Spring-Summer 1998.
Los
Olvidados by Saul Austerlitz
Bazin,
Andre. ‘Cruelty and Love in Los Olividados’. (Translated, from Qu’est ce
que le cinema? Vol 3)
Rubia
Barcia, Jose. ‘Luis Bunuel’s Los Olvidados’. Quarterly of Film, Radio
& Television, 7(4), Summer 1953
Conrad,
R. ‘No Blacks or Whites: The Making of Luis Bunuel’s The Young One’.
Cineaste, 20(3), Summer 1993
Diary
of a Chambermaid by Victoria Loy
Luis
Buñuel: Viridiana By Derek Malcolm
The
Phantom of Liberty by Marco Lanzagorta
Tobias,
James. ‘Bunuel’s Net Work’ (on The Phantom of Liberty). Film Quarterly,
Winter 1998.
Durgnat,
Raymond. ‘Bunuel: Belle de Jour’- Love in the Afternoon. Movie, 15, May
1968.
Belle
de jour by Michael Wood book review by Jonathan Dawson
Wood,
Robin. ‘At Night all Cats are Grey’ (on Belle de Jour). Movie, 15, May 1968.
Fuentes,
Carlos. ‘The Discreet Charm of Luis Bunuel’. New York Times magazine, 11th
March 1973.
Rothman,
William. ‘That Obscure Object of Desire’ (Criterion DVD essay
Thomson,
David. ‘That Obscure Object of Desire’. Independent, 28 July 2002.
Willoquet-Maricondi,
Paula. ‘L’Annee Derniere a Marienbad and Cet Obscur Objet du Desir: The
Interpretive Quest’. RLA Archive, 1993.
Luis
Buñuel and That Obscure Object of Desire By Jonathan Kiefer
