Luis Buñuel

Luis Buñuel Portolés (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈlwiz βuˈɲwel]; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the United States.^[1]

Early years

Buñuel was born in Calanda, a small town in the province of Teruel, in Aragón, Spain, to Leonardo Buñuel and María Portolés. He would later describe his birthplace by saying that in Calanda, "the Middle Ages lasted until World War I."^[2] The oldest of seven children, Luis had two brothers, Alfonso and Leonardo, and four sisters: Alicia, Concepción, Margarita and María.

When Buñuel was just four and a half months old, the family moved to Zaragoza, where they were one of the wealthiest families in town. In Zaragoza, Buñuel received a strict Jesuit education at the private Colegio del Salvador. After being kicked and insulted by the study hall proctor before a final exam, Buñuel refused to return to the school. He told his mother he had been expelled, which was not true—and what's more, he had received the highest marks on his world history exam.^[3] Buñuel finished the last two years of his high school education at the local public school.

In 1917, he went to university in Madrid. While studying at the University of Madrid (now Universidad Complutense de Madrid), he became a very close friend of painter Salvador Dalí and poet Federico García Lorca, among other important Spaniard artists living in the Residencia de Estudiantes. Buñuel first studied agronomy then industrial engineering and finally switched to philosophy.

Career

First French period

In 1925, Buñuel moved to Paris, where he began work as a secretary in an organization called the International Society of Intellectual Cooperation. He later found work in France as an assistant director to Jean Epstein on Mauprat (1926) and La chute de la maison Usher (1928), and Mario Nalpas on La Sirène des Tropiques (1927) starring Josephine Baker.

It was during this time that he met his future wife, Jeanne Rucar, whom he married in 1934. The two remained married throughout his life and had two sons, Juan-Luis and Rafael. Diego Buñuel, filmmaker and host of the National Geographic Channel's Don't Tell My Mother series, is his grandson.

Next, Buñuel co-wrote and directed a 16-minute short film, Un chien andalou (1929), with Dalí. This film – which features a series of startling images of a Freudian nature – was enthusiastically received by the burgeoning French Surrealist movement of the time, and continues to be shown regularly in film societies to this day.

He followed Un chien andalou with L'Âge d'Or (1930), partly based on the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom. The film was begun as a second collaboration with Dalí, but, by the time the film went into production, Buñuel and Dalí had had a falling out, and so Dalí actually had nothing to do with the actual making of L'Âge d'Or. During this film, he worked around his technical ignorance by filming mostly in sequence and using nearly every foot of film that he shot. L'Âge d'Or was read to be an attack on Catholicism, and thus, precipitated an even larger scandal than Un chien andalou. The right-wing press criticized the film and the police placed a ban on it that lasted 50 years.

Spain

Following L'Âge d'Or, Buñuel returned to Spain and directed Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan (1933), one of the first examples of mockumentary. The film focused on peasant life in Extremadura, one of Spain's poorest states, where "fresh bread was unheard of" and where "at times, a goat falls from the rocks", presumably from starvation. The success of the rebels in the Spanish Civil War caused the expatriation of many artists and intellectuals from the Nationalist dictatorship of Francisco Franco (whose revolt against the overtly atheist Republican government had the strong backing of the Spanish Catholic hierarchy). Buñuel - living at the time in Madrid - could see that someone with his political and artistic sensibilities would have no place in Nationalist Spain. Back in Paris, Buñuel co-wrote and produced a documentary short about the changing political climes in Spain, called España 1936.

United States

In exile after the Spanish Civil War, Buñuel settled in Hollywood to capitalize on the short-lived fad of producing foreign-language versions of American films for sales abroad. After Buñuel worked on a few Spanish-language remakes, the industry eventually turned to the dubbing of dialogue. He then left Hollywood for New York, getting a job at the Museum of Modern Art from Iris Barry, where he put together compilation films, including a juxtaposition of two Nazi propaganda films: Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1934) and Hans Bertram's Feuertaufe.

Dali, in his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942), suggested that he had split with Buñuel because the latter was a Communist and an atheist. Buñuel was fired (or resigned) from MOMA, supposedly after Cardinal Spellman of New York went to see Iris Barry, head of the film department at MOMA. Buñuel then went back to Hollywood, where he worked in the dubbing department of Warner Brothers from 1942 to 1946.

In his 1982 autobiography Mon Dernier soupir (My Last Sigh, 1983), Buñuel wrote that he submitted a treatment to Warner Bros. about a disembodied hand which was later adapted (without his consent and without paying him royalties) into The Beast with Five Fingers (1946) with Peter Lorre. Buñuel also wrote that, over the years, he rejected Dalí's attempts at reconciliation.

In 1972, Buñuel, along with his screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière and producer Serge Silberman, was invited by George Cukor to his house. This gathering was particularly memorable and other invitees included Alfred Hitchcock, Rouben Mamoulian, Robert Mulligan, George Stevens, Billy Wilder, Robert Wise and William Wyler.^[4]

Mexican period

Buñuel arrived in Mexico in 1946 and acquired Mexican citizenship in 1949. He relinquished his Spanish passport as it was not possible to have dual citizenship then. The first film he directed there was Gran Casino (1946), a vehicle for Stars Jorge Negrete and Libertad Lamarque, produced by Oscar Dancigers. Buñuel found the plot boring and it was not hugely successful.

He later again collaborated with Dancigers directing El Gran Calavera (1949), a successful film starring 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 Dancigers 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), which was 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.

Buñuel remained in Mexico for the rest of his life, although he spent periods of time filming in France and Spain. In Mexico, he filmed 20 films in all, including:

• Él (1953)
• The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955)
• Nazarín (1959) (based on a novel by Spain's Benito Pérez Galdós, and adapted by Buñuel to a Mexican context)
• The Exterminating Angel (1962)
• Simon of the Desert (1965)

Second French period

After the golden age of the Mexican film industry ended, Buñuel started to work in France along with Silberman and Carrière. During this "French Period", Buñuel directed some of his best-known works:

• Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)
• Belle de Jour (1967)
• Tristana (1970, a French/Spanish/Italian co-production)
• The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
• The Phantom of Liberty (1974)
• That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)

Last years

After the release of That Obscure Object of Desire he retired from film making, and wrote (with Carrière) an autobiography, Mon Dernier Soupir (My Last Sigh), published in 1982, which provides an account of Buñuel's life, friends, and family as well as a representation of his eccentric personality. In it, he recounts dreams, encounters with many well-known writers, actors, and artists such as Pablo Picasso and Charlie Chaplin, and antics such as dressing up as a nun and walking around town. As one might deduce from these antics, Buñuel was famous for his atheism. In a 1960 interview with Michele Manceaux in L'Express, Buñuel famously declared: "Thank God I'm an atheist."

However, he repudiated this statement in a 1977 article in The New Yorker. "I'm not a Christian, but I'm not an atheist, either", he said. "I'm weary of hearing that accidental old aphorism of mine, 'I'm an atheist, thank God.' It's outworn. Dead leaves. In 1951, I made a small film called Mexican Bus Ride, about a village too poor to support a church and a priest. The place was serene, because no one suffered from guilt. It's guilt we must escape from, not God."

Buñuel died in Mexico City in 1983. His funeral was very private. There were about 50 people at the most, among them Octavio Paz, José Luis Cuevas, Miguel Littin, his wife and two sons.

Influences

Surrealism

Buñuel's films were famous for their surreal imagery, including scenes in which chickens populate nightmares, women grow beards, and aspiring saints are desired by lascivious women. Even in the many movies he made for hire (rather than for his own creative reasons), such as Susana and The Great Madcap, he usually added his trademark of disturbing and surreal images. Running through his own films is a backbone of surrealism; Buñuel's world is one in which an entire dinner party suddenly finds itself 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. An example of a more Dada influence can be found in Cet obscur objet du désir, when Mathieu closes his eyes and has his valet spin him around and direct him to a map on the wall.

Buñuel 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.

Religion

Many of his films were openly critical of middle class morals and organized religion, mocking the Roman Catholic Church in particular but religion in general, for hypocrisy. Many of his most famous films demonstrate this:

• Un chien andalou (1929) – A man drags pianos, upon which are piled two dead donkeys, two priests, and the tablets of The Ten Commandments.
• L'Âge d'Or (1930) – A bishop is thrown out a window, and in the final scene one of the culprits of the 120 days of Sodom is portrayed by an actor dressed in a way that he would be recognized as Jesus.
• El Gran Calavera (1949) – During the final scenes of the wedding, the priest continuously reminds the bride of her obligations under marriage. Then the movie changes and the bride runs chasing her true love.
• Ensayo de un crimen (1955) – A man dreams of murdering his wife while she's praying in bed dressed all in white.
• Nazarin (1959) – The pious lead character wreaks ruin through his attempts at charity.
• Viridiana (1961) – A well-meaning young nun tries unsuccessfully to help the poor. One scene in the film parodies The Last Supper.
• El ángel exterminador (1962) – The final scene is of sheep entering a church, mirroring the entrance of the parishioners.
• Simón del desierto (1965) – The devil tempts a saint by taking the form of a bare-breasted girl singing and showing off her legs. At the end of the film, the saint abandons his ascetic life to hang out in a jazz club.
• La Voie Lactée (1969) – Two men travel the ancient pilgrimage road to Santiago de Compostela and meet embodiments of various heresies along the way. One dreams of anarchists shooting the Pope.

Technique

Buñuel's style of directing was extremely economical. He shot films in a few weeks, rarely deviating from his script (the scene in Tristana where Catherine Deneuve exposes her breasts to Saturno — but not the audience — being a noted exception) and shooting in order as much as possible to minimize editing time. He told actors as little as possible, and limited his directions mostly to physical movements ("move to the right", "walk down the hall and go through that door", etc.). He often refused to answer actors' questions and was known to simply turn off his hearing aid on the set. Though they found it difficult at the time, many actors who worked with him acknowledged later that his approach made for fresh and excellent performances.

Buñuel preferred scenes which could simply be pieced together end-to-end in the editing room, resulting in long, mobile, wide shots which followed the action of the scene. Examples are especially present in his French films. For example, at the restaurant / ski resort in Belle de jour, Séverin, Pierre, and Henri are conversing at a table. Buñuel cuts away from their conversation to two young women who walk down a few steps and proceed through the restaurant, passing behind Séverin, Pierre, and Henri, at which point the camera stops and the young women walk out of frame. Henri then comments on the women and the conversation at the table progresses from there.

Buñuel disliked non-diegetic music (music not intrinsic to the scene itself) and avoided its use, although the traditional drums from Calanda are heard in most of his films. The films of his French era were not scored and some (Belle de jour, Diary of a Chambermaid) are without music entirely. Belle de jour does, however, feature (potentially) non-diegetic sound effects.

Tributes

• In Calanda, Spain a bust of the head of Luis Bunuel is on display at the Centro Bunuel Calanda, a museum devoted to the director.^[5]

Awards

Luis Buñuel was given the Career Golden Lion in 1982 by the Venice Film Festival and the FIPRESCI Prize – Honorable Mention in 1969 by the Berlin Film Festival. In 1977, he received the National Prize for Arts and Sciences for Fine Arts.

Filmography

Bibliography

• Bunuel Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)
• Buñuel biography
• Luis Buñuel, Mi Ultimo Suspiro (English translation My Last Sigh Alfred A. Knopf, 1983)
• Froylan Enciso, "En defensa del poeta Buñuel", en Andar fronteras. El servicio diplomático de Octavio Paz en Francia (1946–1951), Siglo XXI, 2008, pp. 130–134 y 353–357.
• Michael Koller "Un Chien Andalou", Senses of Cinema January 2001 Retrieved on 26 July 2006.
• Ignacio Javier López, The Old Age of William Tell: A Study of Buñuel's '"Tristana", MLN 116 (2001): 295–314.
• Ignacio Javier López, "Film, Freud and Paranoia: Dalí and the Representation of Male Desire in An Andalusian Dog", "'Diacritics'" 31,2 (2003): 35–48.
• Javier Espada y Elena Cervera, México fotografiado por Luis Buñuel.
• Javier Espada y Elena Cervera, Buñuel. Entre 2 Mundos.
• Javier Espada y Asier Mensuro, Album fotografico de la familia Buñuel.

References

External links

• Luis Buñuel at the Internet Movie Database
• Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
• They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?
• Interview with Jean-Claude Carriere – Bunuel's screenwriter and friend
• The Religious Affiliation of Luis Buñuel
• Luis Buñuel at Find a Grave
• La furia umana, n°6, multilanguage dossier (texts by Gilberto Perez, Adrian Martin, Toni D'Angela, Alberto Abruzzese and others) [1]