Luis Buñuel

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

Surrealism

Famous are his scenes where chickens populate nightmares, women grow beards, and aspiring saints are desired by luscious women. Even in the many mediocre movies he made for hire (rather than for his own creative reasons), such as Susana, Robinson Crusoe, and The Great Madcap, he always added his trademark of genuinely disturbing and surreal images. Running through his own brilliant films is a backbone of devoted surrealism; Buñuel's world is one in which an entire dinner party suddenly finds themselves inexplicably unable to leave the room and go home, a bad dream hands a man a letter which he brings to the doctor the next day, and where the devil, if unable to tempt a saint with a pretty girl, will fly him to a disco. Un Chien Andalou is often hailed as a great surrealist work, but much less is said about The Phantom of Liberty, made nearly 50 years later and every bit as surreal, a true masterwork of a filmmaker at his peak. Buñuel kept the faith longer than any other surrealist in any medium, and true to those roots, he never explained or promoted his work. On one occasion, when his son was interviewed about The Exterminating Angel, Buñuel instructed him to give facetious answers; for example, when asked about the presence of a bear in the socialites' house, Buñuel fils claimed it was because his father liked bears. Similarly, the several repeated scenes in the film were explained as having been put there to increase the running time. As a result, Buñuel remains little-known, and is often totally misunderstood.

Related Topics:
Susana - The Great Madcap - Un Chien Andalou - The Phantom of Liberty

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