Luis Buñuel

Luis Buñuel Portoles (February 22, 1900 – July 29, 1983) was a Spanish-born Mexican filmmaker.

Mexican era

Buñuel arrived in Mexico in 1946 at the age of 46, and met film producer Oscar Dancigiers. After directing an film named Gran Casino (1946), produced by Dancigiers, Buñuel thought his career as a filmmaker was over. Three years later he decided to become a Mexican citizen and accepted to direct (under Dancigiers' production) El Gran Calavera (1949), an unpretentious but highly successful film starring superstar (at the time) Fernando Soler. As Buñuel himself has stated, he learned the techniques of directing and editing while shooting El Gran Calavera. Its success at the box-office encouraged Dancigiers to accept the production of a more ambitious film for which Buñuel, apart from writing the script, had complete freedom to direct. The result was his critically acclaimed Los Olvidados (1950), a masterpiece of urban surrealism (and recently considered by UNESCO as part of the world's cultural heritage). Los Olvidados (and its triumph at Cannes) made Buñuel an instant world celebrity and the most important Spanish-speaking film director in the world.

Related Topics:
Mexico - 1946 - Oscar Dancigiers - Gran Casino - El Gran Calavera - 1949 - Fernando Soler - Los Olvidados - 1950 - Surrealism - Cannes

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Buñuel spent most of his later life in Mexico, where he directed 21 films. Some of them are masterpieces of world cinema, and were highly acclaimed, specially in European festivals. Among them we find:

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• Él (1952)
• Ensayo de un crimen (The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz) (1955)
• Nazarín (1958) (based on the novel by Benito Perez-Galdos, and adapted by Buñuel to the colonial mexican context)
• Viridiana (1961) (coproduction Mexico-Spain and winner at Cannes)
• El Ángel Exterminador (The Exterminating Angel) (1962)
• Simón del Desierto (Simon of the Desert) (1965).