The Discreet Charm of Luis Bunuel

I haven't seen any of these besides Un Chien Andalou, and that was in school abt five years ago. What do I get from netflix?

Short Answer: Whatever you can get from 'em.

I was lucky that my university videotape library had most of the Mexican films in awful prints. All the major ones are available (not to sure about El though).

his autobiography >>>> most of his films

Longer Answer: Viridiana, and that run from Belle onwards.

(x-post)

Simon

My vote's for Los Olvidados, followed by ...Bourgeoisie and Belle De Jour, but will agree that, these exceptions aside, even his good films have dead patches.

Simon

I almost voted for El but went for Phantom

any of these four are good to start with, and the less you know about them going in, the better.

The Exterminating Angel (1962)
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
The Phantom of Liberty (1974)
That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)

after that... everything else, Los Olvidados & El are my two favorites from the Mexico City years 1947-1960. and the autobiography is for anyone.

xpost I don't find his best films to have any dead patches, you just need to rescreen them

I have! I watched Viridiana and ...Chambermaid this weekend. The latter's actually a lot better than I remember it, but the first half of Viridiana -- the Fernando Rey section -- drags. Pauline Kael OTM: Bunuel doesn't even dignify her inclination to do good (Nazarin a much better film on this same theme, actually), so Viridiana's primness makes the pace rather leaden.

his Mexican soapers Susana and Wuthering Heights are great fun.

Yup.

Dug up Orson Welles' remarks on Bunuel preserved in the Bogdanovich book. He's totally OTM:

He's a rich feeding ground for that sort of critic, because it's all true about him. You can take off and say he likes feet and all that. Jesus, it's all true. He's that kind of intellectual, and that kind of Catholic. He is a deeply Christian man who hates God as only a Christian can, and, of course, he's very Spanish. I see him as the most supremely religious director in the history of the movies. A superb kind of person he must be. Everyone loves him.

unlike many of his others, Viridiana improves if you read up on the back story before actually seeing the film. the insults are very deeply encoded, the film isn't worried about its pacing it's just content to exist as a prolonged blasphemy, and the final supper is an outrage. and it worked, there's a reason almost every copy of the film in the world was confiscated and destroyed

http://www.kevinkee.com/2007/09/27/viridiana-bunuels-masterpiece-nearly-destroyed/

(xpost)
The funny thing is, if you read that book of interviews with the two Mexican critics, Objects of Desire, he denies everything! Which used to make me not like the book, but now I realize that, of course, that is what he would say.

But the back stories of most of his films is fascinating. Read Objects of Desire, his booklength conversations with two sympathetic Mexican critics, which is almost as great as My Last Sigh. Out of print, alas, but available in most libraries.

ha! xpost

The Exterminating Angel for me.

Chunks of the Objects... book have been reprinted in Criterion's booklets for most of his films they've put out. Discreet Charm is an exception.

I need to see more of his stuff. Loved Discreet Charm but the others I've seen, Chambermaid and the two after Discreet, were disappointing in comparison.

I don't like the post-Discreet films much either; That Obscure Object of Desire reeeeally drags.

I subscribe to the new reasonably well-populated school of thought that the Mexican films are pretty much the best ones. One time I had a brief discussion with the guy who runs Cinema Tropical and he said something like "Those films really feel like they are from the gut."

I am not as up on the Mexican films as I should be, but I just don't think anything can touch The Discreet Charm, it's got everything.

More than anything by Sam Fuller, those Mexican Bunuel films make an airtight case for the virtues of the B-movie ethos as practised by an artist. Take Mexican Bus Ride, Susana, or Wuthering Heights. The acting is at best listless, the production values a little better than fifth graders using construction paper and papier mache, but man! He was never more authentically subversive and hence surrealist.

OTM. Now I'm thinking I should have voted for Illusion Travels By Streetcar, if only for the little Genesis play-within-the-movie featuring an Eve dressed in a Stone Age leopard-skin fur bikini and a sombrero-wearing Adam with a pistol in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other.

I don't really buy that, but it's nice to consider anyway.

In other words, Mexican Bus Ride is OK and all, but it's no L'Age d'Or.

gotta go with exterminating angel. what a movie.

I just voted for Las Hurdes, or what is called in English Land Without Bread. Watched it earlier last week for a class and it stuck with me and I figure it will be under-represented. It's actually available on google video for those who haven't seen it.

Simon is a personal favourite but L’Âge d'or has a fantastic sense of rhythm, Max Fucking Ernst and Jesus as the Duc de Blangis so what the hell I gotta give it the vote.

Simon isn't even out on DVD, right?

Doesn't look like it. I don't know if this is because it's a (semi-) short or what. Most of the Region 2 Bunuels are cheapy compilations tho.

Haven't seen many of the Mexican films.

Don't like "That Obscure Object of Desire" much.

Watched "Diary of a Chambermaid" recently - it's an odd film, something quite creepy and unsettling about it.

Also saw "The Milky Way" recently... totally incomprehensible!

I'm going for "Exterminating Angel".

So you've seen at least one Mexican film, then.

ian, start with L’Âge d'or and Los Olvidados, then whatever. My other favorites are The Exterminating Angel, Diary of a Chambermaid, Tristana and Discreet Charm.

Only the famous ones! (xp)

I think Tristana was Hitchcock's favorite. There is a story in My Last Sigh about Hitch sitting next to Buñuel at some Directors Guild function and saying "I loved that bit about the leg" then getter drunker and drunker as the evening progressed and repeating "That leg! That leg!"

That picture of every Old Hollywood director meeting at Cukor's house in Buñuel's honor is really, really odd – who'd have thought that Rouben Mamoulian and George Stevens were fans?

Certainly John Ford was to be expected, but some of those others...

Was Lewis Milestone there?

Was Ford even there? I seem to remember seeing his eyepatch

He and Fritz Lang couldn't make it. Apparently Don Luis was quite nervous about meeting Lang, even asking for an autograph.

That thing he wrote about Metropolis that's in An Unspeakable Betrayal is pretty great.

I always thought those old directors were kind of celebrating themselves and using Don Luis as a pretext. Well, not a pretext exactly, but..

Any excuse for a booze up

Exactly

Ford came to luncheon at George Cukor's house that Bunuel wrote about in MLS. He mentioned that the event was notable because it was the last time any of them saw Ford alive.

He passed away shortly afterward, his last moments spent cradled in Peter Bogdanovich's arms.

Then again, it's conceivable that the directors of The Greatest Story Ever Told and Ben-Hur loved Viridiana and The Milky Way.

What about the producer of The Robe, Frank Ross?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

l'age d'or.

should have been left to make films of whatever length rather than spin them out to the industry standard.

the welles comment is, typically, cant. "A superb kind of person he must be. Everyone loves him." false on both counts.

what would be the point if everyone loved him?

why is john ford "to be expected" a fan, and "certainly" at that? everyone likes to schmooze a critical favourite, but is there some hidden affinity connecting ford and bunuel?

Don't be cranky! Regarding Welles' comment, the context is clear: Bunuel's a superb person because of his iconoclasm. No analysis is required.

Moreover, if I were to judge his acumen by the quality of his oral remarks to the fawning Peter Bogdanovich, Welles was an intermittently superb film critic. Must have been all that time between films.

Don't be cranky!
Nice try.

i think he one of the saddest careers really. he did actually work on, maybe even direct, a few films in the 30s... maybe in madrid even, but somehow never had the opportunities renoir had. 'exterminating angel' and 'discreet' are a great double-feature tho.

redd, i have no idea who you are but you called me a dick on some thread so whatever.

Had one of the best careers ever.

No, Enrique, I gave you a hard time on one of those films threads, but I didn't call you that (I think the only time I called anybody that was ethan during Katrina)

What a Bunuel-Carriere script: Ethan During Katrina.

He "spun out" his best films following the "industry standard"! He learned concision and restraint -- both Surrealist virtues, no?

I used to get annoyed when I would tell my slacker Austin friends I was watching a Bunuel and they'd say "Cool: is it Surreal?"

(Now I remember why I was mad at him. He was accusing everybody of liberal handwringing when many were worried about actual people they knew down there)

I guess I should have said: "They're all Surreal, even when they're not!"

x to quitney

I think he got to do mostly what he wanted from 1960 til death. Which is more than most people in his line of work. The 30s movies are something else but the post-Mexico movies wouldn't've been the way they were without that experience of making commercial genre flicks. His intent and execution are along-side Hitch and Lang for me.

OTM. Years ago I tried to have a discussion here about Hitch, Lang and Bunuel being three directors who had started in the silent era and were still working productively in the 60s but I can't find it. I think it went nowhere because I worded it incorrectly and amateurist jumped on me.

I voted for "Él" just because it's the craziest indictment of Latin machismo ever put on screen. And Buñuel was a bit of a machista hisself! Also, it's hella Surrealist: amour fou and all that. My second choice would be "L'Age D'or" -- especially because it's sexy as hell. But they're all great!

should have been left to make films of whatever length rather than spin them out to the industry standard.

There's only one word for that - bollocks.

otm

Bunuel's later films >>>>>> Lang and Hitchcock's.

Where is the line drawn for "later" with the three?

after 1960?

Lang made movies after 1960?

Personally, I'd mark the first film of Hitchcock's "late" period as Marnie, which I think is grebt. Not sure about Buñuel, tho. Everything from Viridiana on feels of a piece.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse was released in 1960 and that was it. But yeah, Alfred's inequality is pretty much otm.

Two votes for Ensayo!

Why does that deserve an exclamation point? I might have voted for it and made it three.

It was not a predictable choice (I like it fine).

(xpost)
But maybe I add a star for that one because of the backstory of Miroslava Stern having an affair with legendary bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguin, about-to-be husband of Lucia Bosé, who herself appeared in a Buñuel film or two, and father of Miguel Bosé, who played the cross-dressing judge in Almodóvar's High Heels. Who I don't think is the same Dominguin who helped get Viridiana get made, but is the Dominguin who once said something like "I have over four hundred scars on my body, and every one bears the name of a woman."

Hm. Looks like he had something going with Ava Gardner too. Yet another reason to finally start reading that Lee Server bio, Love is Nothing.

Wow, I didn't know half the story of Miroslava. Wikipedia en español has the sad scoop, calling her "a Mexican Marilyn Monroe" and providing not one but two versions of her death, one a suicide, and one a complicated mysterious plane crash.

Re Lang, B-pictures like The Blue Gardenia are really pretty well done- by far the best of these is The Big Heat - but still not a patch on the pants of Spies, Mabuse, The Weary Death, etc.

No doubt it helped to have Mr. Nicholas Musuraca behind the camera.

Oh darnit. If I'd seen this I'd have voted Tristana, for the simple fact that he redeemed the elements of the Galdos novel that made me itchy. Novel is quite cool and proto-feminist but then virtually makes Tristana disappear in the end.

At long last: Simon of the Desert on DVD. I can throw away my secondhand VHS copy.

The Discreet Charm is one of my 5 favourite films ever fwiw, but I only saw it long after this poll closed

Have you seen "The Phantom of Liberty" yet?

I've only seen Discreet Charm and Viridiana which are both awesome, the former more so.

Go watch the Criterion prints of The Exterminating Angel and Simon of the Desert. Suffice to say, they've never looked better.

I gotta say: SOTD, one of my favorites, now looks minor: a very amusing one-joke movie (I can't see how it could have been any longer); but TEA is much better than I remembered (I remembered it as a slacker, poorly acted prototype for The Discreet Charm).

just got the exterminating angel disc. one of my favourite movies of all time.

i have both but i think i prefer it to discreet charm... more focused, tighter. not sure if it's funnier tho.

btw my last sigh is really one of the great memoirs. must must read.

Yup. It's the sort of book I want to buy for every friend.

If Simon is one-joke then the shorter running time doesn't exhaust it, but I disagree. The ending still dives off at this profound tangent that's probably the most moving sequence Bunuel ever made, for me. Anyway I need to get the official DVD, all I've got is an AVI at the moment.

Yeah, I disagree with Kael's dismissal of the ending -- it's a great party, and not at all the snarky gesture that Bunuel intended.

Simon has a kind of "My God it's full of stars" look on his face at this point.

Then he's just uninterested and a bit sad. I don't think he's a figure of fun by then.

"I remembered it as a slacker, poorly acted prototype for The Discreet Charm."

Hmmmm, this is what I still think. May have to give it another go.

Cheers Alfred! I'll track 'em down. :)

I remember an interview with Dave "not A." Stewart, in which he was rating an early Bunuel film.

Although, the article had him praising the film "Large Door".

(Actually that *was* "A", not "not A" after all, oh)

That Obscure Object Of Desire has gone instantly into my all-time top 10, maybe 5. It is monumental.

I mean, in its grand, assured, completely controlled efflorescence it feels like some sort of definitive work; every single last detail is so astonishingly observed. I chuckled to myself at its wry exquisiteness pretty much throughout. And that ending...oh, that ending.

I saw Belle De Jour last night as well and didn't think it was quite as good, despite some excellent fantasy-blurs-with-reality mindfucking.

i've only seen Los Olvidados and Un Chien Andalou. Adored the former, was bored by the latter, and feel like I should see more since I gather neither is particularly representative of the oeuvre and obv. lots of praise for the man here and elsewhere.

I'm not as fond -- the pace slackens in places -- my love for Bunuel's French films waxes and wanes. The Discreet Charm is unfuckwithable, though.

*BUT my love for

Agreed on Discreet Charm, but I'd place Obscure Object right alongside it. They're equivalents in epic frustration.

After seeing this poll when it was revived a month ago, I got The Discreet Charm out of the library but when I watched it I was kinda sleepy and I was just dazed and confused trying to stay awake pay attention to what was going on. I think I liked it, maybe I should just watch it again.

Missed the poll, would have added a third vote to Belle de jour.

The Pixies review Un chien andalou:

Got me a movie, I want you to know.
Slicing up eyeballs, I want you to know.
Girlie so groovy, I want you to know.
Don't know about you, but I am un chien andalusia...

Wanna grow up to be a debaser...

Got me a movie, ha-ha-ha-ho...
Slicing up eyeballs, ha-ha-ha-ho...
Girlie so groovie, ha-ha-ha-ho...
Don't know about you, but I am un chien andalusia...

Debaser...

And it would have made a better video than anything the Pixies ever made. Wonder if anyone has ever synched them...?

Given the talk about Bunuel dbl bills above there are a couple of them at the Riverside Studios that look good: tomorrow its Discreet Charm... with Diary of a Chambermaid

Weird, saw Obscure Object again tonight. Still my favourite film of all time. My friend thought it was interminably boring.

The Phantom Of Liberty >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Monty Python's Meaning Of Life

(they're kinda pretty similar IMO)

ok I'm gonna rank the Bunuel I've seen - please dispute, suggest (ban) etc

That Obscure Object Of Desire (favourite film ever)
The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoise (in personal top 5)
The Exterminating Angel (in personal top 20)
The Phantom Of Liberty (possibly in personal top 30 - it's really fucking arresting and GODDAMN funny)
Viridiana (first one I saw! awesome)
Belle De Jour (not as good as the other late-periods...he hadn't quite nailed his colour mastery or subject-matter...but still a marvellous film)
Tristana (nice, mysterious, a bit forgettable, kinda haunting)
L'Age D'Or (DO YOU SEE?!?!?!)
Un Chien Andalou (DO YOU SEE?!?!?! except really short and kinda more a piece of video art than a film - an important one tho, and nice piano-dragging image)

basically he had a genius for injecting surrealism into film, but only slowly did he learn (starting really with The Exterminating Angel which is the best disaster movie ever) to inject that surrealism into a tangible depiction of reality, and only slowly did he grow to fully understand the human brain - his later works are as savage, light-footed and wry as anything committed to film - he is the greatest director to have lived IMO -

what did u love so much about The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoise? i never got too much out of his movies cept for Belle De Jour tbh. Un Chien Andalou has some arresting images but so what

I don't find L'Age d'Or DO YOU SEE?!?!?!?! at all. It'd be in my top 2 or 3, there are so many beautiful images and awesome gags in it. The opening 10-15 minutes is probably my favourite Buñuel, alongside the close of Simon del Desierto. The later movies are great but to my mind they're far more engaged in DYS-satire than L'Age d'Or, which just feels more thoroughly its own thing, a purer surrealism and blast of black humour.

Think you'd like The Milky Way a good deal, LJ, and everybody should see Simon given a chance - no region 2 DVD yet, bastards.

Un Chien Andalou has some arresting images but so what

Think this hinges on "Are you down with Surrealists y/n?" tbh, and your tolerance for unorthodox narrative (not necessarily the absence of narrative).

diary of a chambermaid
viridiana
los olvidados
tristana
the exterminating angel

of those i've seen

TDCOTB is basically an airy breeze through the stately, unobtrusive ambitions of a bunch of well-to-do sorts (such as those who might work on or watch one of his movies), and how they are undercut at every turn by chance, flaw, error, being in a bad dream, or pure spite. They retain their dignity as best they can. They are shown at their most undignified, and yet they walk tall. The comedy is profound. You gotta trust me on this one. It's fucken profound. And it's made with such chutzpah...Bunuel's mastery of the deadpan situational twist is absolute by this point.

BDJ is a little more forced IMO, a little more contrived, although it has some fantastic ideas and images. TDCOTB does the whole 'fantasy/reality' dichotomy much more sublimely - they're not just one and the same but you're really not sure there's much of a dichotomy any more. This all culminates in the heatstroke of filmic gnosticism that is his final, absolute work - as feather-light and knowing a portrait of man as I've seen. :)

I need to see L'Age D'Or again! I saw it once and was a bit 'buhhhhh ok that's quite pointed' - it's still great but I felt it was very much based upon its iconoclasm - it was hitting rather than delicately imbibing. Nonetheless some images and segues are amazing - the violing getting kicked down the street is one of my favourite things

And yes, The Milky Way is very much on the agenda

as I've said before 'the very finest surrealism is perfectly logical to someone' and Bunuel understands this more and more as he goes on

i'm sketchy with bunuel & am gonna rent that obscure object on your sayso LJ. i will webmail you for a reimbursement if it's terrible.

Un Chien Andalou has some arresting images but so what

ha ha, really? i mean it's not like you invest hours and get minimal return.

do so schlump! i will merely turn up at your house with a bucket of water

'reimbursement'/spongebath

Get Simon of the Desert.

I still stand what I wrote upthread:

More than anything by Sam Fuller, those Mexican Bunuel films make an airtight case for the virtues of the B-movie ethos as practised by an artist. Take Mexican Bus Ride, Susana, or Wuthering Heights. The acting is at best listless, the production values a little better than fifth graders using construction paper and papier mache, but man! He was never more authentically subversive and hence surrealist.

Also: last year's DVD release of The Exterminating Angel, which I never much liked after college, was revelatory for me.

Yeah, I need to check those films out xpost

My best friend and I saw that TEA DVD together a few months ago, in absolute awe. The group's descent into despair is so convincing! Parts seem almost improvised in their unfolding horror. And the last five minutes is the pulling of the most almighty rug - yeah, pretty Do You See but also completely awesome

I think Las Hurdes is STILL ahead of its time.

Las Hurdes was once available in a twofer edition with Un Chien Andalou. When I saw it in high school with some buddies, we all screamed when the sheep or the goat toppled off the hill.

Get a hold of as many of the Mexican Buñuels as you can. They're all pretty much great viewing and personal favorites because of the restrained use of Surrealist touches in many of them (the Meat Dream in Los Olvidados being prob his most unrestrained ).

I think Las Hurdes is STILL ahead of its time.

Actually, that's bull. Raul Ruiz certainly picked up where Las Hurdes left off. And then some. In fact, Ruiz's entire career has been rather Las Hurdes-esque.

Ruiz is an underrated master but the last couple of films I've seen have been disconcertingly hacky. Still - he seems to be the only person fit to have carried on in Buñuel's shoes. "Combat D'amour En Songe" is tremendous - like "The Milky Way" run through Borges, medieval Romances and Robert Louis Stevenson..

Get a hold of as many of the Mexican Buñuels as you can.

my favorite one of this period & the most obsessive = El (This Strange Passion) -- do not miss

breaking an egg on the lense of the camera.

I kinda regret my one-sentence summary of L'Age D'Or now, and really do want to see it again ASAP in order to banish such sentiments

on The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, which I'm rewatching:

Bunuel's mastery of the deadpan situational twist is absolute by this point

OTM.

I actually went hunting upthread to see who that was! VINDICATION

The Phantom Of Liberty is absolutely nothing BUT deadpan situational twists - it's dazzling, but I would agree with anyone who said that Bunuel was at his best when operating within a (loose) plot.

Is there any other filmmaker who has this ability to present the ludicrous as logical?

http://cinefilevideo.com/shop/shirts/bunuel-t-shirt/

http://cinefilevideo.com/wp-content/uploads/wpsc/product_images/FINALbunuel-2.jpg

Didn't know Death in the Garden got a DVD release a couple of years ago! Found it at the library today. Good interview with Michel Piccoli included with the extras.

Has anyone seen that documentary,A proposito de Buñuel aka Regarding Luis Buñuel?

Did you like Death in the Garden, Alfred? I remember being kind of bored by it.

"A proposito de Buñuel " is basically his son Juan-Luis and Jean Claude Carriere travelling around to various sites that were formative to Buñuel (Spain, Paris, LA, Mexico...). Many cool anecdotes along the way, especially a sort of sad one about LB and Dali late in their lives. Worth watching.

Did you like Death in the Garden, Alfred? I remember being kind of bored by it.

yep -- a bore.

Seem to dimly remember him blaming its floppitude on the cameraman in that interview with the Mexicans book.

should've voted Tristana

That film was damn near impossible to find even in the nineties. I saw it once on VHS in '97.

Tristana? I've got it on the DVD box set.

Hoberman reviews a new book on Don Luis' opportunistic, card-carrying Communist years:

http://www.thenation.com/article/167559/charismatic-chameleon-luis-bunuel

adventures of robinson crusoe is on tcm this wkend, sunday late i believe

Wrote a blurb about the Criterion release of The Milky Way.

I forgot that BDJ released earlier this year.

watched Exterminating Angel for the first time in an age last week. age hasn't diminished it tho its claustrophobia was more intense than i remembered.

have been very fond of The Milky Way since i first saw it, something about the cinematography and the locations and the look and feel of it i find hugely soothing, more so than any other Buñuel i think

when I first saw the milky way I was like "oh great this is the jesus movie" and for whatever reason, probably what noodle said, but I found it deeply moving

the movie is like a really great new song on a greatest hits comp

Tristana is showing at Linc Ctr tnite, and I don't see any evidence of a Region 1 DVD in print.

another plug for Objects of Desire. Good xmas gift.

watched El Bruto on a decent DVD transfer. One of his Mexican potboilers. Entertaining but not as rich as Wuthering Heights or El. Best scene is a lovemaking that takes place while some pork is being roasted on a fire.

also: goddamn it when are we getting Criterion release for Los olvidados?

Cohen Film Collection put out Tristana stateside on dvd/blu last month.

we're in midst of a retro -- may see Susana tnite

http://www.bam.org/film/2014/bunuel

Fernando Rey is magnificent in Tristana, which I confirm is close to the summit of LB's work

Él is really somethin'... I mean, look at the first 5 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wy2rL6e_Ao

El is top drawer Don Luis. Susana is fun.

No one's top drawer is more full than his.

El is the best film I know about machismo because it's smart enough to show its attractions and utility.

which are...? aside from raw naked power, when combined with money?

My fave comic moment is when the wife's innocent, pudgy friend responds to Francisco's nutty accusations and slap by decking him.

I dunno if I want to see Galvan naked.

a top drawer full of footwear

actor remembrances after his death in '83

JEANNE MOREAU: He was a fantastic person. He was the only director I know who never threw away a shot. He had the film in his mind. When he said “action” and “cut,” you knew that what was in between the two would be printed.

He worked with me mostly on physical movement. We didn’t speak too much about the character. But, as in life, sometimes you express yourself better and end up saying more by talking about something else.

MICHEL PICCOLI: I used to taunt him that it was Catherine Deneuve and I who made him. I said, “For years, nobody saw your films , except intellectuals, until we did Belle de Jour.” And he’d become very animated and agree and say, “You’re right, thank you.” We laughed and joked all the time. His laughter came out of a terrible anguish, but was non-stop.

He was once interviewed in Spain by French TV, which sent a crew with two trucks. He told them, “I could make a film with what it cost you to bring all this here.” He told them he preferred to do the interview in Toledo. They asked him if he liked that town especially and he answered, “No. I detest it. It’s full of flies.” Then they asked him if in El, he was influenced by Sade. He said no. The interviewer insisted: “In the movie, the man sews up the woman’s vagina.” Buñuel responded, “When your wife betrays you, you get drunk. I simply sew her up. There’s nothing sadistic about it.”

http://www.filmcomment.com/article/luis-bunuel-remembered

I love that OTM Orson Welles quote I posted a few years ago.

it's conceivable that the directors of The Greatest Story Ever Told and Ben-Hur loved Viridiana and The Milky Way.

cheap shot, much?

tonight is Wuthering Heights, which I saw about 20 years ago... anything to say about The Great Madcap or The River and Death?

http://www.bam.org/film/2014/the-great-madcap

http://www.bam.org/film/2014/the-river-and-death

Wuthering Heights good, those other two did nothing for me.

when did you see em?

Nineties. Can't even remember where. Either Anthology or Walter Reade.

Wuthering Heights is better than the Wyler version, horrible acting and production values and all.

but I love most of Don Luis' Mexican movies.

If they're showing his "Robinson Crusoe" then go see! Yes, his "Wuthering Heights" is fantastic. I'll take Mexican Buñuel over his 60s/70s Spanish/French films any day - great as those European films are.

His Mexican period is his most satisfying overall.

well I had forgotten almost everything about WH, incl Liebestod on the soundtrack, all the horrific animal/insect imagery and the crypt finale. Also Catherine/Catalina's loutish brother had to be Rod Steiger's Mexican cousin.

my library has Crusoe.

Crusoe boats eerie-quiet moment of Crusoe and animals or Crusoe and his tools that evoke Bresson. Dan O'Herlihy's Oscar nod one of the great WTF moments, not because he didn't deserve it.

*boats

There's a crappy tv channel over here which shows Crusoe quite often, I'd never seen it before

*BOASTS dammit

Slant did this LB baedeker 12+ (!) years ago

http://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/the-savage-poetry-of-luis-bunuel

Fever Rises in El Pao? Daughter of Deceit?

by all means watch El Pao but you'll forget about it in a day. I haven't seen DOD.

well it's $9 to get in and i'm poor so that doesn't sound like a good deal.

to be honest it's been many years and you may like it. Those Mexican films are surprising.

it would be easier if BAM was doing them as double features

this fucking movie

http://michaelgloversmith.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/olvidados.jpg

a romantic comedy

a knee slapper from the moment the mom bathes her legs in milk

“Stephen Sondheim is at work on a new musical with the playwright David Ives (Venus in Fur) based on two renowned films by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel, The Exterminating Angel and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” reports Patrick Healy for the New York Times. “The Public Theater and the film and theater producer Scott Rudin are producing the work; the Public’s artistic director, Oskar Eustis, said on Saturday that the Public planned to mount the show at some point in the future.”

cautiously interested because Sondheim

The Exterminating Charm of the Bourgeoisie

Rewatched Belle de Jour last night and it's amazing how I forgot about the criminal duo that upends (except they don't) the third act. LB always knows what he's doing, at least by the '60s.

Pierre Clémenti's is the greatest metal-toothed character in cinema, sorry Richard Kiel and James Franco.

Anyone seen the documentary that is on the latest Exterminating Angel disc where Bunuel's son and Jean-Claude Carriere visit all the major cities in LB's life? Lotsa funny Dali stories. Bunuel was working in the film department of NYC MoMA during WWII!

Until Dali squealed and Don Luis fell victim to blacklist politics.

yes, p sure that's covered in the doc i mentioned (i assume it is in My Last Sigh? i have that in a box somewhere)

The extra doc on the Discreet Charm disc includes, most usefully, the recipe for the Bunueloni.

lots of hilarity in BdJ, but as scholarly guy on commentary track points out, Deneuve basically throws a vase of flowers on the floor when she's supposed to drop em. You can envision LB gleefully skipping a retake.

I noticed the gesture too years ago but it fits: Severine as petulant child.

Madame Anais one of the better acted and written supporting characters in the Bunuel universe.

I watched tristana a year or two ago and i didnt really get it i guess...

"Robinson Crusoe" on again right now, on the channel movies4men.

I have never seen that one yet, from what I can gather it is his most conventional movie.

It's not his most conventional. He made a couple of low budget romantic flicks also while in Mexico and those are conventional but RC is full of weirdness. And it's wonderful.

got it on DVD, its surrealism is contextualized within the standard Crusoe narrative but that illuminates the original as much as constrains Bunuel

I just realised it is an English language movie and in colour, I may have already seen this when I was a kid.

I like that he preserves the homoerotic undertones.

xp

i've tried to work out the same thing, it looks like something that wd've been on TV in the 70s but when i watched it as an adult it didn't bring back any memories

xp

aren't all stories of "men at sea" from the 18th and 19th century kinda shot thru with homoerotica?

Mutiny on the Bounty elided it.

tbf that was real

oh I meant the 1935 movie

fair enough my "rowwwr Brando" comment wd've been misplaced too

I definitely watched a Crusoe movie at a 50p matinee at some point in the 70's. They would mainly show Children's Film Foundation productions like Glitterball, Digby ... etc supplemented by a few cartoons. But sometimes they would screen 50's/60's family entertainment type movies so it isn't totally inconceivable that it was Bunuel's Crusoe, in fact looking at Imdb there are not any likelier candidates from that era.

Actually after another search it may well have been Disney's Swiss Family Robinson with John Mills that I saw!

that wd seem plausible and i definitely remember it getting regular cinema showings

Showing Un Chien Andalou to my first-years on Wednesday. Do I warn them about the eye ahead of time?

maybe tell them something icky happens in the opening sequence

Update: they knew what was coming before I showed the film. A few students hid behind their fingers, but most were just intrigued at the prospect of watching the scene. One girl arrived at the class at the absolute worst possible moment and got a bit of a shock.

As for the film itself, which I had never actually seen its entirety before, I liked it, but it in leading with its most powerful image its kinda anticlimactic. That said, the drooling pervert, the bits of slapstick, the censuring of the cross-dresser, the faux Hollywood ending (and the concluding reveal)--all great.

"God and country are an unbeatable team" -- his best.

nice write-up; really, really need to see more of those mid-period films

did I mention that a couple of years ago I saw a showing of TOOOD w/ a Carriere Q&A? and asked him a question? about the sack Rey carries about with him (it contains a lot of multitudes for a one-joke film)

I'm glad you learnt the perfect martini from him, Alf. I took some drinking advice from him as well, when he said in his My Last Breath autobiography that a bottle of red wine a day does you no harm.

Two glasses for me, perhaps a Bunueloni.

👌

RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDKGmW-5nbw

Fantastic write-up Alfred. Will have to try his recipe for a dry one too.

Thank you!

The dash of bitters does make a difference.

“Lately, my own sexual desire has waned and finally disappeared, even in dreams. And I’m delighted; it’s as if I’ve finally been relieved of a tyrannical burden.”

Shaw said something similar

I can't wait to be in the grips of a major passion.

what you and Major Passion do isn't even the Army's business

abismos de pasion

im usu in the grips of two thighs

happy Luis Day

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/expecting-the-unexpected-four-by-luis-bunuel

happy bday bunny!

my favorite is Belle de Jour

as a tribute, I'll open an extra bottle of red wine tonight.

Republicans looking for a restaurant that will serve them in 2018 pic.twitter.com/e8ILcp4jP9

— Eric Allen Hatch (@ericallenhatch) June 25, 2018

looooool real tweets

NYC MoMA doing a J-C Carriere retro... I'd forgotten he'd written a couple big Volker Schlondorff movies, let alone Birth.

https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/5066?locale=en

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6767-luis-bu-uel-eternal-surrealist

rare '55 film It's Called the Dawn streaming for free here; some call it "atypical," it was a favorite of his

https://kinoslang.blogspot.com/2020/04/kino-slang-quarantine-presents-cela.html

I'm thinking of making my housemates watch The Exterminating Angel with me, seems appropriate.

yes, that is a film for this moment

it seems resonant with our world now

Yes, do it.

Death in the Garden (1956)

This is on the bfi player. Anyone seen it?

S'okay.

Yeah, no great shakes

Thanks won't bother, for now. Couple more things I want to check first.

watched 'It's Called the Dawn'. it's slow but I liked it! power to the people. Buñuel giving longtime fans a shoutout with the Jesus streetlamp oriface portrait & the baby turtle. cool to see Julien Bertheau playing the exact same chief of police he plays 20 years later in 'Phantom' and 'Discreet Charm', and cool to see Lucia Bosè (I am a huge fan of her 1981 record with Gregorio Paniagua 'lo Pomodoro' - Atrium Musicae de Madrid / Gregorio Paniagua )

probably best saved after you've worked through the 60s-70s films. safe introduction into the 50's films is still 'El'. but this was a treat if you've already enjoyed 'Strange Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz' & 'Mexican Bus Ride'.

that Jesus photo was real btw, not his creation

I just knew!

thanks for posting

Death in the Garden has so many bizarrely ordinary colonial/jungle trek passages. Was he trying to get a hit? A few weirdnesses here and there, sure, like the snake / ants shot, and the brutal dispatch of most of the cast at the end.

it definitely tops his other films for use of guns and ammo

Pierre Clémenti's is the greatest metal-toothed character in cinema, sorry Richard Kiel and James Franco.

Morbz otm.

Madame Anais one of the better acted and written supporting characters in the Bunuel universe.

Alfred otm.

Like when she doesn't allow Severine to kiss her.

Yes, it's a great performance, very subtle.

in Belle du Jour I could relate to Séverine’s difficulty connecting sex with love - sex could only be about fantasy for her, and her love for her husband was something she could only really understand through fantasy

DIG THAT WES ANDERSON FONT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gENBxJl5bDs

I watched a few of the films he made in Mexico last year. Quite enjoyed Illusion Travels By Streetcar though it seems more like a low key Ealing Comedy or Disney thing than what he's best known for.

That's a good one. Fair enough, but I like that side of his work too.

I watched Discreet Charm way earlier in life than would be advisable and it made perfect sense to me alongside the Monty Python movies.

ITBS and most of his Mexican productions were all chock full o’ that Surrealist spirit, IMHO. Isn’t there a scene where meat’s being sold on a tramcar? That comes to mind.

Like I said upthread, the $13 budgets of those Mexican films make many of them scarier and more effective.

Yes, exactly.

I can't wait to be in the grips of a major passion.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 7 December 2017 16:15 (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

what you and Major Passion do isn't even the Army's business

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 7 December 2017 16:17 (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

On tonight:

https://princecharlescinema.com/PrinceCharlesCinema.dll/WhatsOn?f=25443525

One of the more idiosyncratic Bunuel rankings I've seen. Mexican Bus Ride at #1!

https://letterboxd.com/diogoserafim/list/luis-bunuel/

That's a fantastic ranking. El (which is my current fave) told me that I really need to see the Mexican years.

A lot of the French stuff is dull (ofc watch it but).

Really wish I was on a good torrents site rn. That's what I'd be downloading.

Excellent!

Diary of a Chambermaid, The Phantom of Liberty, and The Milky Way don't do much for me either.

I'll have to give Subida another shot, since I haven't seen it since college and it was easily the one that impressed me the least

The Mexican films are really good. Still a couple I haven't seen.

One of the more idiosyncratic Bunuel rankings I've seen. Mexican Bus Ride at #1!

I loved that one particularly.

I gave The Milky Way my first viewing in years. Amusing for about 20 minutes in a Catholic boy having a laff sort of way. Those French films were as uneven as the Mexican ones.

Right. And so the Mexican films are more of a gift in that we might not have expected as much, lower budgets, less star power etc.

My French 2 class seems to have ended up doing a film unit that I didn't really plan on. We have a 100-minute block on Monday. Should I show them The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie?

Sure, why not?

yes

Happy birthday, cabron!

Was somewhat surprised how enjoyable Susana was, after catching a screening at MoMA. Buñuel himself seemed to underrate it, going by stray comments of his.

I dont think he was capable of making a non good film. There's only 5 I haven't seen.

lol i was gonna say more or less that, tho maybe i'd say non-enjoyable rather than non-good

I don't think he was capable of mixing a bad martini.

Thanks to that MoMA retrospective, I've now seen most of his films, and I'm inclined to agree, it's likely he's never made a bad film. Certainly some are better than others - as mentioned in the retrospective's notes, several of those films were very much commercial films with little room to do anything more - but they all have something to like and most have some measure of greatness to them. It's a testament to Bunuel that he made the best of where life took him to an extraordinary degree, going to Mexico to work as a "commercial" filmmaker when MoMA rescinded their job offer, then over the course of a decade building that into a launching pad for a third act as a European arthouse giant.

FWIW, among the Mexican films including Viridiana, which had its state of origin reclassified as Mexico, I'd say he made at least ten genuine masterpieces. Pretty remarkable considering how much his reputation probably rests on his earlier and later films simply because the availability of his Mexican films hasn't been reliable, especially in decent print quality. Hopefully that changes soon - many of those titles had great-looking and very recent restorations.

At worst Don Luis' lesser films suffer from a malnourished idea or a poor execution of a promising idea, neither of which fatal flaws for a director.

I really need to see Subida al cielo again. My memory is not that of a masterpiece, but I've seen so many suggest otherwise

LOL, not surprised I said basically the same itt already

I really liked this one. Wish I could get a physical version of it to watch.
https://letterboxd.com/film/illusion-travels-by-streetcar/

Was the MoMA Mexican series mentioned yet?

Yes, I see that it was, more than once

Just finished. I had some vague intention to get over there but somehow something suddenly came up.

Él gets the Criterion nod.

https://www.criterion.com/films/33695-el

about time!

Seeing way more chatter about it than Criterion releasing Eyes Wide Shut as well, that's for sure.

An Eyes Wide Shut directed by Don Luis would've been a keeper.

And now, Viridiana:

https://www.criterion.com/films/373-viridiana

'bout time!

Thought you didn't like that one

Same as the Radiance release?