Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish and Mexican filmmaker who worked in
France
France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
,
Mexico
Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...
and
Spain
Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...
. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians and directors to be one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.
Buñuel's works were known for their
avant-garde
In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...
surrealism which were also infused with
political commentary.
Often associated with the
surrealist movement
Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...
of the 1920s, Buñuel's career spanned the 1920s through the 1970s. He collaborated with prolific surrealist painter
Salvador Dali on ''
Un Chien Andalou'' (1929) and ''
L'Age d'Or'' (1930).
Both films are considered masterpieces of
surrealist cinema
Surrealist cinema is a modernist approach to film theory, criticism, and production, with origins in Paris in the 1920s. The Surrealist movement used shocking, irrational, or absurd imagery and Freudian dream symbolism to challenge the traditiona ...
. From 1947 to 1960, he honed his skills as a director in Mexico, making grounded and human
melodramas
A melodrama is a dramatic work in which plot, typically sensationalized for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodrama is "an exaggerated version of drama". Melodramas typically concentrate on dial ...
such as ''
Gran Casino'' (1947), ''
Los Olvidados'' (1950) and ''
Él'' (1953). Here is where he gained the fundamentals of storytelling.
Buñuel then transitioned into making artful, unconventional, surrealist and political
satirical
Satire is a genre of the visual arts, visual, literature, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently Nonfiction, non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ...
films. He earned acclaim with the morally complex arthouse drama film ''
Viridiana'' (1961) which criticized the
Francoist dictatorship
Francoist Spain (), also known as the Francoist dictatorship (), or Nationalist Spain () was the period of Spanish history between 1936 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death i ...
. The film won the at the
1961 Cannes Film Festival
The 14th Cannes Film Festival took place from 3 to 18 May 1961. French writer Jean Giono served as jury president for the main competition.
The ''Palme d'Or'' was jointly awarded to '' The Long Absence'' by Henri Colpi and '' Viridiana'' by Lu ...
. He then criticized political and social conditions in ''
The Exterminating Angel
''The Exterminating Angel'' () is a 1962 Mexican surrealism, surrealist black comedy film written and directed by Luis Buñuel. Starring Silvia Pinal and produced by Pinal's then-husband Gustavo Alatriste, the film tells the story of a group of ...
'' (1962) and ''
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
''The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie'' () is a 1972 surrealist satirical black comedy film directed by Luis Buñuel, who wrote the screenplay in collaboration with Jean-Claude Carrière. The narrative concerns a group of French bourgeoisie an ...
'' (1972), the latter of which won the
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (known as Best Foreign Language Film prior to 2020) is one of the Academy Awards handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to a ...
. He also directed ''
Diary of a Chambermaid'' (1964) and ''
Belle de Jour'' (1967). His final film, ''
That Obscure Object of Desire'' (1977), earned the
National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director.
Buñuel earned five
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Film Festival (; ), until 2003 called the International Film Festival ('), is the most prestigious film festival in the world.
Held in Cannes, France, it previews new films of all genres, including documentaries, from all around ...
prizes, two
Berlin International Film Festival
The Berlin International Film Festival (), usually called the Berlinale (), is an annual film festival held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festival has been held every February since 1978 and is one of Europ ...
prizes, and a
BAFTA Award
The British Academy Film Awards, more commonly known as the BAFTAs or BAFTA Awards, is an annual film award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) to honour the best British and international contributions to f ...
as well as nominations for two
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence ...
s. Buñuel received numerous honors including
National Prize for Arts and Sciences for Fine Arts in 1977, the
Moscow International Film Festival
The Moscow International Film Festival (, Transliteration, translit. ''Moskóvskiy myezhdunaródniy kinofyestivál''; abbreviated as MIFF) is a film festival first held in Moscow in 1935 and became regular since 1959. From its inception to ...
Contribution to Cinema Prize in 1979, and the
Career Golden Lion in 1982. He was nominated twice for the
Nobel Prize in Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning ''for'' Literature (), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in ...
in
1968
Events January–February
* January 1968, January – The I'm Backing Britain, I'm Backing Britain campaign starts spontaneously.
* January 5 – Prague Spring: Alexander Dubček is chosen as leader of the Communist Party of Cze ...
and
1972
Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using Solar time, ...
. Seven of Buñuel's films are included in ''
Sight & Sound
''Sight and Sound'' (formerly written ''Sight & Sound'') is a monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). Since 1952, it has conducted the well-known decennial ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time. ...
'' 2012 critics' poll of the top 250 films of all time. Buñuel's obituary in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' called him "an
iconoclast
Iconoclasm ()From . ''Iconoclasm'' may also be considered as a back-formation from ''iconoclast'' (Greek: εἰκοκλάστης). The corresponding Greek word for iconoclasm is εἰκονοκλασία, ''eikonoklasia''. is the social belie ...
, moralist, and revolutionary who was a leader of avant-garde surrealism in his youth and a dominant international movie director half a century later."
Early life and education
Buñuel was born on 22 February 1900 in
Calanda, a small town in the
Aragon
Aragon ( , ; Spanish and ; ) is an autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. In northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces of Spain, ...
region of Spain.
His father was Leonardo Buñuel, also a native of Calanda, who had left home at age 14 to start a hardware business in
Havana, Cuba
Havana (; ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.[Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...](_bl ...<br></span></div>, ultimately amassing a fortune and returning home to Calanda at the age of 43, in 1898.<ref name=Havana></ref> He married the 18-year-old daughter of the only innkeeper in Calanda, María Portolés Cerezuela.<ref name=gallegos></ref> The oldest of seven children, Luis had two brothers, Alfonso and Leonardo, and four sisters: Alicia, Concepción, Margarita and María.<ref name=schwarze></ref> He later described his birthplace by saying that in Calanda, )
lasted until
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
".
[Luis Buñuel, ''My Last Sigh'', translated by Abigail Israel, New York: Alfred Knopf, 1983.]
When Buñuel was four months old, the family moved to
Zaragoza
Zaragoza (), traditionally known in English as Saragossa ( ), is the capital city of the province of Zaragoza and of the autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It lies by the Ebro river and its tributaries, the ...
, where they were one of the wealthiest families in town.
In Zaragoza, Buñuel received a strict
Jesuit
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
education at the private Colegio del Salvador,
starting at the age of seven and continuing for the next seven years.
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; in fact, he had received the highest marks on his world history exam.
Buñuel finished the last two years of his high school education at the local public school,
graduating at the age of 16. Even as a child, Buñuel was something of a cinematic showman; friends from that period described productions in which Buñuel projected shadows on a screen using a
magic lantern
The magic lantern, also known by its Latin name , is an early type of image projector that uses pictures—paintings, prints, or photographs—on transparent plates (usually made of glass), one or more lens (optics), lenses, and a light source. ...
and a bedsheet.
He also excelled at boxing and playing the violin.
In his youth, Buñuel was deeply religious, serving at Mass and taking Communion every day, until, at the age of 16, he grew disgusted with what he perceived as the illogicality of the Church, along with its power and wealth.
In 1917, he attended the
University of Madrid, first studying
agronomy
Agronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants by agriculture for food, fuel, fiber, chemicals, recreation, or land conservation. Agronomy has come to include research of plant genetics, plant physiology, meteorology, and ...
then
industrial engineering
Industrial engineering (IE) is concerned with the design, improvement and installation of integrated systems of people, materials, information, equipment and energy. It draws upon specialized knowledge and skill in the mathematical, physical, an ...
and finally switching to
philosophy
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
.
He developed very close relationships with painter
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (11 May 190423 January 1989), known as Salvador Dalí ( ; ; ), was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, ...
and poet
Federico García Lorca
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936) was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27, a g ...
, among other important Spanish creative artists living in the
Residencia de Estudiantes
ESO Hotel at Cerro Paranal (or Residencia) is the accommodation for Paranal Observatory in Chile since 2002. It is mainly used for the ESO ( European Southern Observatory) scientists and engineers who work there on a roster system. It has been ...
, with the three friends forming the nucleus of the Spanish Surrealist
avant-garde
In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...
,
and becoming known as members of "
La Generación del 27".
Buñuel was especially taken with García Lorca, later writing in his autobiography:
We liked each other instantly. Although we seemed to have little in common—I was a redneck from Aragon, and he an elegant Andalusian—we spent most of our time together...We used to sit on the grass in the evenings behind the Residencia (at that time, there were vast open spaces reaching to the horizon), and he would read me his poems. He read slowly and beautifully, and through him I began to discover a wholly new world.
Buñuel's relationship with Dalí was somewhat more troubled, being tinged with jealousy over the growing intimacy between Dalí and Lorca and resentment over Dalí's early success as an artist.
Buñuel's interest in films was intensified by a viewing of
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton Lang (; December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976), better known as Fritz Lang (), was an Austrian-born film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in Germany and later the United States.Obituary ''Variety Obituari ...
's ''
Der müde Tod'': "I came out of the
Vieux Colombier heater
Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC ) is the use of various technologies to control the temperature, humidity, and purity of the air in an enclosed space. Its goal is to provide thermal comfort and acceptable indoor air quality. ...
completely transformed. Images could and did become for me the true means of expression. I decided to devote myself to the cinema".
At the age of 72, Buñuel had not lost his enthusiasm for this film, asking the octogenarian Lang for his autograph.
Career
1925–1930 Early 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 also became actively involved in cinema and theater, going to the movies as often as three times a day.
Through these interests, he met a number of influential people, including the pianist
Ricardo Viñes, who was instrumental in securing Buñuel's selection as artistic director of the Dutch premiere of
Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla y Matheu (, 23 November 187614 November 1946) was a Spanish composer and pianist. Along with Isaac Albéniz, Francisco Tárrega, and Enrique Granados, he was one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20t ...
's puppet-opera ''
El retablo de maese Pedro'' in 1926.
He decided to enter the film industry and enrolled in a private film school run by
Jean Epstein and some associates.
At that time, Epstein was one of the most celebrated commercial directors working in France, his films being hailed as "the triumph of
impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
in motion, but also the triumph of the modern spirit".
Before long, Buñuel was working for Epstein as an assistant director on ''
Mauprat'' (1926) and ''
La chute de la maison Usher'' (1928),
and also for
Mario Nalpas on (''
Siren of the Tropics'') (1927), starring
Josephine Baker
Freda Josephine Baker (; June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975), naturalized as Joséphine Baker, was an American and French dancer, singer, and actress. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in France. She was the first Black woman to s ...
.
He appeared on screen in a small part as a smuggler in
Jacques Feyder
Jacques Feyder (; 21 July 1885 – 24 May 1948) was a Belgian film director, screenwriter and actor who worked principally in France, but also in the US, Britain and Germany. He was a director of silent films during the 1920s, and in the 193 ...
's ''
Carmen
''Carmen'' () is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed by the O ...
'' (1926).
When Buñuel derisively rejected Epstein's demand that he assist Epstein's mentor,
Abel Gance
Abel Gance (; born Abel Eugène Alexandre Péréthon; 25 October 188910 November 1981) was a French film director, producer, writer and actor. A pioneer in the theory and practice of montage, he is best known for three major silent films: ''J'ac ...
, who was at the time working on the film ''
Napoléon
Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French general and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led a series of mi ...
'', Epstein dismissed him angrily, saying "How can a little asshole like you dare to talk that way about a great director like Gance?"
then added "You seem rather surrealist. Beware of surrealists, they are crazy people."
After parting with Epstein, Buñuel worked as film critic for ''
La Gaceta Literaria'' (1927) and ''
Les Cahiers d'Art'' (1928).
In the periodicals ' and ', he and Dalí carried on a series of "call and response" essays on cinema and theater, debating such technical issues as segmentation,
découpage, the
insert shot and
rhythmic editing.
He also collaborated with the celebrated writer
Ramón Gómez de la Serna
Ramón Gómez de la Serna y Puig (July 3, 1888 – January 13, 1963), born in Madrid, was a Spanish writer, dramatist and avant-garde agitator. He strongly influenced surrealist film maker Luis Buñuel.
Ramón Gómez de la Serna was especially ...
on the script for what he hoped would be his first film, "a story in six scenes" called ''Los caprichos''.
Through his involvement with ''Gaceta Literaria'', he helped establish Madrid's first cine-club and served as its inaugural chairman.
''Un Chien Andalou'' (1929)
After his apprenticeship with Epstein, Buñuel shot and directed a 16-minute short, , with
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (11 May 190423 January 1989), known as Salvador Dalí ( ; ; ), was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, ...
. The film, financed by Buñuel's mother,
consists of a series of startling images of a
Freudian
Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in t ...
nature,
starting with a woman's eyeball being sliced open with a razor blade. was enthusiastically received by the burgeoning French
surrealist
Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...
movement of the time
and continues to be shown regularly in
film societies to this day.
It has been called "the most famous short film ever made" by critic
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...
.
The script was written in six days at Dalí's home in
Cadaqués. In a letter to a friend written in February 1929, Buñuel described the writing process:
We had to look for the plot line. Dalí said to me, 'I dreamed last night of ants swarming around in my hands', and I said, 'Good Lord, and I dreamed that I had sliced somebody or other's eye. There's the film, let's go and make it.'
In deliberate contrast to the approach taken by Jean Epstein and his peers, which was to never leave anything in their work to chance, with every aesthetic decision having a rational explanation and fitting clearly into the whole,
Buñuel and Dalí made a cardinal point of eliminating all logical associations.
In Buñuel's words: "Our only rule was very simple: no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted. We had to open all doors to the irrational and keep only those images that surprised us, without trying to explain why".
It was Buñuel's intention to outrage the self-proclaimed artistic vanguard of his youth, later saying: "Historically the film represents a violent reaction against what in those days was called 'avant-garde,' which was aimed exclusively at artistic sensibility and the audience's reason."
Against his hopes and expectations, the film was a popular success with the very audience he had wanted to insult,
leading Buñuel to exclaim in exasperation: "What can I do about the people who adore all that is new, even when it goes against their deepest convictions, or about the insincere, corrupt press, and the inane herd that saw beauty or poetry in something which was basically no more than a desperate impassioned call for murder?"
Although is a
silent film
A silent film is a film without synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, w ...
, during the original screening (attended by the elite of the Parisian art world), Buñuel played a sequence of phonograph records which he switched manually while keeping his pockets full of stones with which to pelt anticipated hecklers.
After the premiere, Buñuel and Dalí were granted formal admittance to the tight-knit community of Surrealists, led by poet
André Breton
André Robert Breton (; ; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') ...
.
''L'Age d'Or'' (1930)

Late in 1929, on the strength of , Buñuel and Dalí were commissioned to make another short film by
Marie-Laurie and
Charles de Noailles, owners of a private cinema on the
Place des États-Unis and financial supporters of productions by Jacques Manuel,
Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American naturalized French visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, ...
and
Pierre Chenal
Pierre Chenal (; 5 December 1904 – 23 December 1990) was a French director and screenwriter who flourished in the 1930s. He was married to Czech-born French film actress Florence Marly from 1937 to 1955.
Work
Chenal was best known for film noi ...
.
At first, the intent was that the new film be around the same length as ''Un Chien'', only this time with sound. But by mid-1930, the film had grown segmentally to an hour's duration.
Anxious that it was over twice as long as planned and at double the budget, Buñuel offered to trim the film and cease production, but Noailles gave him the go-ahead to continue the project.
The film, entitled ''
L'Age d'Or'', was begun as a second collaboration with Dalí, but, while working on the scenario, the two had a falling out; Buñuel, who at the time had strong leftist sympathies,
desired a deliberate undermining of all bourgeois institutions, while Dalí, who eventually supported the Spanish fascist
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco Bahamonde (born Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco Bahamonde; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general and dictator who led the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalist forces i ...
and various figures of the European aristocracy, wanted merely to cause a scandal through the use of various
scatological
In medicine and biology, scatology or coprology is the study of faeces.
Scatological studies allow one to determine a wide range of biological information about a creature, including its diet (nutrition), diet (and thus habitat (ecology), where ...
and anti-Catholic images.
The friction between them was exacerbated when, at a dinner party in Cadaqués, Buñuel tried to throttle Dalí's girlfriend,
Gala
Gala may refer to:
Music
* ''Gala'' (album), a 1990 album by the English alternative rock band Lush
* Gala (singer), Italian singer and songwriter
*'' Gala – The Collection'', a 2016 album by Sarah Brightman
* GALA Choruses, an association of ...
, the wife of Surrealist poet
Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard (), born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel (; 14 December 1895 – 18 November 1952), was a French poet and one of the founders of the Surrealist movement.
In 1916, he chose the name Paul Éluard, a matronymic borrowed from his maternal ...
.
In consequence, Dalí had nothing to do with the actual shooting of the film.
During the course of production, Buñuel worked around his technical ignorance by filming mostly in sequence and using nearly every foot of film that he shot. Buñuel invited friends and acquaintances to appear, for nothing, in the film; for example, anyone who owned a tuxedo or a party frock got a part in the salon scene.
''L'Age d'Or'' was publicly proclaimed by Dalí as a deliberate attack on Catholicism, and this precipitated a much larger scandal than .
One early screening was taken over by members of the fascist
League of Patriots and the Anti-Jewish Youth Group, who hurled purple ink at the screen
and then vandalised the adjacent art gallery, destroying a number of valuable surrealist paintings.
The film was banned by the Parisian police "in the name of public order".
The de Noailles, both Catholics, were threatened with
excommunication
Excommunication is an institutional act of religious censure used to deprive, suspend, or limit membership in a religious community or to restrict certain rights within it, in particular those of being in Koinonia, communion with other members o ...
by
The Vatican because of the film's blasphemous final scene (which visually links
Jesus Christ
Jesus (AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the Jesus in Chris ...
with the writings of the
Marquis de Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade ( ; ; 2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814) was a French writer, libertine, political activist and nobleman best known for his libertine novels and imprisonment for sex crimes, blasphemy and pornography ...
), so they made the decision in 1934 to withdraw all prints from circulation, and ''L'Age d'Or'' was not seen again until 1981, after their deaths,
although a print was smuggled to England for private viewing. The furor was so great that the premiere of another film financed by the de Noailles,
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau ( , ; ; 5 July 1889 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, film director, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost avant-garde artists of the 20th-c ...
's ''
The Blood of a Poet'', had to be delayed for over two years until outrage over ''L'Age d'Or'' had died down.
To make matters worse, Charles de Noailles was forced to withdraw his membership from the
Jockey Club
The Jockey Club is the largest commercial horse racing organisation in the United Kingdom. It owns 15 of Britain's famous racecourses, including Aintree Racecourse, Aintree, Cheltenham Racecourse, Cheltenham, Epsom Downs Racecourse, Epsom ...
.
Concurrent with the ''
succès de scandale
''Succès de scandale'' ( French for "success from scandal") is a term for any artistic work whose success is attributed, in whole or in part, to public controversy surrounding the work. In some cases the controversy causes audiences to seek o ...
'', both Buñuel and the film's leading lady,
Lya Lys
Lya Lys (born Nathalie Margoulis; May 18, 1908 – June 2, 1986) was a German-born American actress.
Biography
Lya Lys was born in Berlin on May 18, 1908U.S. Naturalization Records August 7, 1933 to a Russian banker and French pediatrician who ...
, received offers of interest from
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, commonly shortened to MGM or MGM Studios) is an American Film production, film and television production and film distribution, distribution company headquartered ...
and traveled to Hollywood at the studio's expense.
While in the United States, Buñuel associated with other celebrity expatriates including
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein; (11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, screenwriter, film editor and film theorist. Considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, he was a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage. He is no ...
,
Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg (; born Jonas Sternberg; May 29, 1894 – December 22, 1969) was an American filmmaker whose career successfully spanned the transition from the Silent film, silent to the Sound film, sound era, during which he worked with mos ...
,
Jacques Feyder
Jacques Feyder (; 21 July 1885 – 24 May 1948) was a Belgian film director, screenwriter and actor who worked principally in France, but also in the US, Britain and Germany. He was a director of silent films during the 1920s, and in the 193 ...
,
Charles Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered ...
and
Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...
.
All that was required of Buñuel by his loose-ended contract with MGM was that he "learn some good American technical skills",
but, after being ushered off the first set he visited because the star,
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo (born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson; 18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990) was a Swedish-American actress and a premier star during Hollywood's Silent film, silent and early Classical Hollywood cinema, golden eras.
Regarded as one of the g ...
, did not welcome intruders, he decided to stay at home most of the time and only show up to collect his paycheck.
His only enduring contribution to MGM came when he served as an extra in ''La Fruta Amarga'', a Spanish-language remake of ''
Min and Bill''.
When, after a few months at the studio, he was asked to watch
rushes of
Lili Damita to gauge her Spanish accent, he refused and sent a message to studio boss
Irving Thalberg
Irving Grant Thalberg (May 30, 1899 – September 14, 1936) was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and ability to select scripts, choose actors, gather productio ...
stating that he was there as a Frenchman, not a Spaniard, and he "didn't have time to waste listening to one of the whores".
He was back in Spain shortly thereafter.
1931–1937: Spain
Spain in the early 1930s was a time of political and social turbulence.
Due to both a surge in anti-clerical sentiment and a longrunning desire for retribution for the corruption and malfeasance of the extreme right and their supporters in the church, Anarchists and
Radical Socialists sacked
monarchist
Monarchism is the advocacy of the system of monarchy or monarchical rule. A monarchist is an individual who supports this form of government independently of any specific monarch, whereas one who supports a particular monarch is a royalist. C ...
headquarters in
Madrid
Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...
and proceeded to burn down or otherwise wreck more than a dozen churches in the capital. Similar revolutionary acts occurred in many other cities in southern and eastern Spain, in most cases with the acquiescence and occasionally with the assistance of the official Republican authorities.
Buñuel's future wife, Jeanne Rucar, recalled that during that period, "he got very excited about politics and the ideas that were everywhere in pre-Civil War Spain".
In the first flush of his enthusiasm, Buñuel joined the
Communist Party of Spain
The Communist Party of Spain (; PCE) is a communist party that, since 1986, has been part of the United Left coalition, which is currently part of Sumar. Two of its politicians are Spanish government ministers: Yolanda Díaz (Minister of L ...
(PCE) in 1931,
though later in life he denied becoming a Communist.
In 1932, Buñuel was invited to serve as film documentarian for the celebrated ''Mission Dakar-Djibouti'', the first large-scale French anthropological field expedition, which, led by
Marcel Griaule
Marcel Griaule (16 May 1898 – 23 February 1956) was a French author and anthropologist known for his studies of the Dogon people of West Africa, and for pioneering ethnographic field studies in France. He worked together with Germaine ...
, unearthed some 3,500 African artifacts for the new
Musée de l'Homme
The Musée de l'Homme (; literally "Museum of Mankind" or "Museum of Humanity") is an anthropology museum in Paris, France. It was established in 1937 by Paul Rivet for the 1937 ''Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moder ...
.
Although he declined, the project piqued his interest in
ethnography
Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. It explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining ...
. After reading the academic study, ''Las Jurdes: étude de géographie humaine'' (1927) by , he decided to make a film focused on
peasant
A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasan ...
life in
Las Hurdes, perhaps the poorest
comarca
A ''comarca'' (, , , ) is a traditional region or local administrative division found in Portugal, Spain, and some of their former colonies, like Brazil, Nicaragua, and Panama. The term is derived from the term ''marca'', meaning a "march, mark ...
in
Extremadura
Extremadura ( ; ; ; ; Fala language, Fala: ''Extremaúra'') is a landlocked autonomous communities in Spain, autonomous community of Spain. Its capital city is Mérida, Spain, Mérida, and its largest city is Badajoz. Located in the central- ...
, one of Spain's poorest regions.
The film, called ''
Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan'' (1933), was financed on a budget of 20,000 pesetas donated by a working-class
anarchist
Anarchism is a political philosophy and Political movement, movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or Social hierarchy, hierarchy, primarily targeting the state (polity), state and capitalism. A ...
friend named
Ramón Acín, who had won the money in a lottery.
In the film, Buñuel matches scenes of deplorable social conditions with narration that resembles travelogue commentary delivered by a detached-sounding announcer,
while the soundtrack thunders inappropriate music by
Brahms.
''Las Hurdes'' was banned by the
Second Spanish Republic
The Spanish Republic (), commonly known as the Second Spanish Republic (), was the form of democratic government in Spain from 1931 to 1939. The Republic was proclaimed on 14 April 1931 after the deposition of Alfonso XIII, King Alfonso XIII. ...
and then by the
Francoist dictatorship
Francoist Spain (), also known as the Francoist dictatorship (), or Nationalist Spain () was the period of Spanish history between 1936 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death i ...
.
It is a film which continues to perplex viewers and resists easy categorization by film historians.
''Las Hurdes'' has been called one of the first examples of
mockumentary
A mockumentary (a portmanteau of ''mock'' and ''documentary'') is a type of film or television show depicting fictional events, but presented as a Documentary film, documentary. Mockumentaries are often used to analyze or comment on current event ...
,
and has been labeled a "surrealist documentary", a term defined by critic as "A multi-layered and unnerving use of sound, the juxtaposition of narrative forms already learnt from the written press, travelogues and new pedagogic methods, as well as a subversive use of photographed and filmed documents understood as a basis for contemporary propaganda for the masses".
Catherine Russell has stated that in ''Las Hurdes'', Buñuel was able to reconcile his political philosophy with his surrealist aesthetic, with surrealism becoming "a means of awakening a marxist materialism in danger of becoming a stale orthodoxy".
After ''Las Hurdes'' in 1933, Buñuel worked in Paris in the
dubbing
Dubbing (also known as re-recording and mixing) is a post-production process used in filmmaking and the video production process where supplementary recordings (known as doubles) are lip-synced and "mixed" with original production audio to cr ...
department of
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation, commonly known as Paramount Pictures or simply Paramount, is an American film production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the flagship namesake subsidiary of Paramount ...
, but following his marriage in 1934, he switched to
Warner Brothers
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (WBEI), commonly known as Warner Bros. (WB), is an American filmed entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California and the main namesake subsidiary of Warner Bro ...
because they operated dubbing studios in Madrid.
A friend, , who owned the commercial film company , invited Buñuel to
produce
In American English, produce generally refers to wikt:fresh, fresh List of culinary fruits, fruits and Vegetable, vegetables intended to be Eating, eaten by humans, although other food products such as Dairy product, dairy products or Nut (foo ...
films for a mass audience. He accepted the offer, viewing it as an "experiment" as he knew the film industry in Spain was still far behind the technical level of Hollywood or Paris.
According to film historian
Manuel Rotellar's interviews with members of the cast and crew of the Filmófono studios, Buñuel's only condition was that his involvement with these pictures be completely anonymous, apparently for fear of damaging his reputation as a surrealist.
Rotellar insists, however, "the truth is that it was Luis Buñuel who directed the Filmófono productions".
José Luis Sáenz de Heredia
José Luis Sáenz de Heredia (10 April 1911 – 4 November 1992) was a cinema of Spain, Spanish film director. He was born in Madrid. His film ''Ten Ready Rifles'' was entered into the 9th Berlin International Film Festival.
Filmography
...
, the titular director of two of the films created during Buñuel's years as "executive producer" at Filmófono, recounted that it was Buñuel who "explained to me every morning what he wanted...We looked at the takes together and it was Buñuel who chose the shots, and in editing, I wasn't even allowed to be present."
Of the 18 films produced by Buñuel during his years at Filmófono, the four that are believed by critical consensus to have been directed by him
are:
* ''Don Quintín el amargao'' (Don Quintin the Sourpuss), 1935 – a musical based on a play by Carlos Arniches, the first ''zarzuela
() is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular songs, as well as dance. The etymology of the name is uncertain, but some propose it may derive from the name o ...
'' (a type of Spanish opera) filmed in sound.
* '' La hija de Juan Simón'' (Juan Simón's Daughter), 1935 – another musical and a major commercial success
* (Who Loves Me?), 1936 – a sentimental comedy that Buñuel called "my only commercial failure, and a pretty dismal one at that".
* '' ¡Centinela, alerta!'', (Sentry, Keep Watch!), 1937 – a comedy and Filmófono's biggest box-office hit.
During the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...
(1936–1939), Buñuel placed himself at the disposal of the Republican government.
The minister for foreign affairs sent him first to
Geneva
Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...
(September 1936) and then to Paris for two years (1936–38), with official responsibility for cataloging Republican propaganda films.
Besides the cataloguing, Buñuel took left-wing tracts to Spain, did some occasional spying, acted as a bodyguard, and supervised the making of a documentary, entitled ''
España 1936'' in France and in Spain, that covered the elections, the parades, the riots, and the war.
In August 1936,
Federico García Lorca
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936) was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27, a g ...
was shot and killed by Nationalist militia.
According to his son,
Juan Luis, Buñuel rarely talked about Lorca but mourned the poet's untimely death throughout his life.
Buñuel essentially functioned as the coordinator of film propaganda for the Republic, which meant that he was in a position to examine all film shot in the country and decide what sequences could be developed and distributed abroad.
The Spanish Ambassador suggested that Buñuel revisit Hollywood where he could give technical advice on films being made there about the Spanish Civil War,
so in 1938, he and his family traveled to the United States using funds obtained from his old patrons, the Noailles.
Almost immediately upon his arrival in America, however, the war ended and the
Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America discontinued making films on the Spanish conflict.
According to Buñuel's wife, returning to Spain was impossible since the Fascists had seized power,
so Buñuel decided to stay in the U.S. indefinitely, stating that he was "immensely attracted by the American naturalness and sociability".
1938–1945: United States

Returning to Hollywood in 1938, he was befriended by
Frank Davis, an MGM producer and member of the
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA (CPUSA), officially the Communist Party of the United States of America, also referred to as the American Communist Party mainly during the 20th century, is a communist party in the United States. It was established ...
,
who placed Buñuel on the payroll of ''Cargo of Innocence'', a film about Spanish refugee mothers and children fleeing from
Bilbao
Bilbao is a city in northern Spain, the largest city in the Provinces of Spain, province of Biscay and in the Basque Country (greater region), Basque Country as a whole. It is also the largest city proper in northern Spain. Bilbao is the List o ...
to the USSR.
The project was shelved precipitately when another Hollywood film about the Spanish Civil War, ''
Blockade
A blockade is the act of actively preventing a country or region from receiving or sending out food, supplies, weapons, or communications, and sometimes people, by military force.
A blockade differs from an embargo or sanction, which are ...
'', was met with disfavor by the
Catholic League of Decency.
In the words of biographer Ruth Brandon, Buñuel and his family "lived from one unsatisfactory crumb of work to another" because he "had none of the arrogance and pushiness essential for survival in Hollywood".
He just was not flamboyant enough to capture the attention of Hollywood decision makers, in the opinion of film composer
George Antheil
George Johann Carl Antheil ( ; July 8, 1900 – February 12, 1959) was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author, and inventor whose modernist musical compositions explored the sounds – musical, industrial, and mechanical – of the ear ...
: "Inasmuch as
uñuel his wife and his little boy seemed to be such absolutely normal, solid persons, as totally un-Surrealist in the Dalí tradition as one could possibly imagine."
For the most part, he was snubbed by many of the people in the film community whom he met during his first trip to America, although he was able to sell some gags to Chaplin for his film ''
The Great Dictator''.
In desperation, to market himself to independent producers, he composed a 21-page autobiography, a section of which, headed "My Present Plans", outlined proposals for two documentary films:
* "The Primitive Man", which would depict "the terrible struggle of primitive man against a hostile universe, how the world appeared, ''how they saw it'', what ideas they had on love, on death, on fraternity, how and why religion is born",
talics in original* "Psycho-Pathology", which would "expose the origin and development of different psychopathic diseases...Such a documental film, apart from its great scientific interest, could depict on screen a ''New Form of Terror'' or its synonym ''Humour''."
talics in originalref name="an unspeakable betrayal" />
Nobody showed any interest and Buñuel realized that staying in Los Angeles was futile, so he traveled to New York City to see if he could change his fortunes.
In New York City, Antheil introduced Buñuel to
Iris Barry, chief curator of film at the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
(MoMA).
Barry talked Buñuel into joining a committee formed to help educate those within the U.S. government who might not have appreciated fully the effectiveness of film as a medium of propaganda. Buñuel was hired to produce a shortened version of
Leni Riefenstahl
Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl (; 22 August 1902 – 8 September 2003) was a German film director, Film producer, producer, screenwriter, Film editing, editor, photographer, and actress. She is considered one of the most controversial ...
's ''
Triumph of the Will
''Triumph of the Will'' () is a 1935 German Nazi propaganda film directed, produced, edited and co-written by Leni Riefenstahl. Adolf Hitler commissioned the film and served as an unofficial executive producer; his name appears in the opening ...
'' (1935) as a demonstration project.
The finished product was a compilation of scenes from Riefenstahl's
Nazi
Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
epic with Hans Bertram's ''Feuertaufe''.
Buñuel stayed at MoMA to work for the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA) as part of a production team that gathered, reviewed and edited films intended as anti-fascist propaganda to be distributed in Latin America by American embassies.
While being vetted for the job at the OCIAA, upon being asked if he was a Communist, he replied: "I am a Republican," and, apparently, the interviewer did not realize that Buñuel was referring to the Spanish socialist coalition government, not the American political party.
Describing Buñuel's work at MoMA, his friend, composer Gustavo Pittaluga, stated: "Luis created maybe 2,000 remarkable works. We were sent anodyne documentaries, often extremely feeble primary materials, which the Museum team turned into marvellous films. And not just Spanish versions, but also Portuguese, French and English...He would create a good documentary through editing."
talics in originalref name=aranda>
In 1942, Buñuel applied for American citizenship because he anticipated that MoMA would be put under federal control.
This same year, Dalí published his autobiography ''The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí'', in which he made it clear that he had split with Buñuel because the latter was a Communist and an atheist.
News of this reached Francis Spellman, Archbishop Spellman, who angrily confronted Barry with the question: "Are you aware that you are harbouring in this Museum the Antichrist, the man who made a blasphemous film ''L'Age d'Or''?"
At the same time, a campaign on the part of Hollywood, through its industry trade paper, the ''Motion Picture Herald'', to undermine the MoMA film unit resulted in a 66% reduction in the department's budget and Buñuel felt himself compelled to resign.
In 1944, he returned to Hollywood for the third time, this time as Spanish Dubbing Producer for
Warner Brothers
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (WBEI), commonly known as Warner Bros. (WB), is an American filmed entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California and the main namesake subsidiary of Warner Bro ...
.
Before leaving New York City, he confronted Dalí at his hotel, the Sherry Netherland Hotel, Sherry Netherland, to tell the painter about the damage his book had done and then shoot him in the knee. Buñuel did not carry out the violent part of his plan. Dalí explained himself by saying: "I did not write my book to put YOU on a pedestal. I wrote it to put ME on a pedestal".

Buñuel's first dubbing assignment on returning to Hollywood was ''My Reputation'', a Barbara Stanwyck picture which became ''El Que Diran'' in Buñuel's hands.
In addition to his dubbing work, Buñuel attempted to develop a number of independent projects:
* In collaboration with an old friend from his Surrealist days,
Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American naturalized French visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, ...
, he worked on a scenario called ''The Sewers of Los Angeles'', which took place on a mountain of excrement close to a highway and a dust basin.
* With his friend, José Rubia Barcia, he co-wrote a screenplay called ''La novia de medianoche'' (The Midnight Bride), a gothic thriller, which lay dormant until it was filmed by Antonio Simón in 1997.
* He continued working on a screenplay called "Goya and the Duchess of Alba", a treatment he had started as early as 1927, with the actor/producer Florián Rey and cameraman José María Beltrán, and then resuscitated in 1937 as a project for Paramount.
* In his autobiography ''Mon Dernier soupir'' (1982, translated in the U.S. as ''My Last Sigh'', 1983, and in the UK as ''My Last Breath'', 1984), Buñuel wrote that, at the request of director Robert Florey, he submitted a treatment of a scene about a disembodied hand, which was later included in the movie ''The Beast with Five Fingers'' (1946), starring Peter Lorre, without acknowledgement of Buñuel's contribution or payment of any compensation.
However, Brian Taves, film scholar and archivist with the Library of Congress, has challenged the truth of this claim.
In 1945, Buñuel's contract with Warner Brothers expired, and he decided not to renew it in order, as he put it: "to realize my life's ambition for a year: to do nothing".
While his family enjoyed themselves at the beach, Buñuel spent much of his time in Antelope Valley with new acquaintances writer Aldous Huxley and sculptor Alexander Calder, from whom he rented a house.
In his autobiography, in a chapter about his second spell in America, Buñuel states that "[o]n several occasions, both American and European producers have suggested that I tackle a film version of Malcolm Lowry's ''Under the Volcano''", but that after reading the book many times as well as eight different screenplays he was unable to come up with a solution for the cinema.
Under the Volcano (1984 film), The movie was eventually made in 1984 by John Huston.
1946–1953: Mexico
In 1946, an old friend, producer Denise Batcheff, Denise Tual, the widow of Pierre Batcheff, the leading man in , proposed that she and Buñuel adapt Lorca's play ''The House of Bernarda Alba, La casa de Bernarda Alba'' for production in Paris.
As it turned out, though, before they could both make their way to Europe, they encountered problems in securing the rights from Lorca's family.
While in Mexico City, on a stopover, they had asked Óscar Dancigers, a Russian émigré producer active in Mexico, for financing.
Dancigers ran an independent production company that specialized in assisting U.S. film studios with on-location shooting in Mexico, but following World War II, he had lost his connection with Hollywood due to his being Hollywood blacklist, blacklisted as a Communist.
Although Dancigers was not enthusiastic about the Lorca project, he did want to work with Buñuel and persuaded the Spanish director to undertake a totally different project.

The Golden Age of Mexican cinema was peaking in the mid-to-late 1940s, at just the time Buñuel was connecting with Dancigers.
Movies represented Mexico's third largest industry by 1947, employing 32,000 workers, with 72 film producers who invested 66 million pesos (approximately U.S. $13 million) per year, four active studios with 40 million pesos of invested capital, and approximately 1,500 theaters throughout the nation, with about 200 in Mexico City alone.
For their first project, the two men selected what seemed like a sure-fire success, ''
Gran Casino'', a musical period piece set in Tampico during the boom years of oil exploitation, starring two of the most popular entertainers in Latin America: Libertad Lamarque, an Argentine actress and singer, and Jorge Negrete, a Mexican singer and leading man in Charro#In cinema, "charro" films.
Buñuel recalled: "I kept them singing all the time—a competition, a championship".
The film was not successful at the box office, with some even calling it a fiasco. Different reasons have been given for its failure with the public; for some, Buñuel was forced to make concessions to the bad taste of his stars, particularly Negrete, others cite Buñuel's rusty technical skills
and lack of confidence after so many years out of the director's chair, while still others speculate that Mexican audiences were tiring of genre movies, called "churros", that were perceived as being cheaply and hastily made.
The failure of ''Gran Casino'' sidelined Buñuel, and it was over two years before he had the chance to direct another picture. According to Buñuel, he spent this time "scratching my nose, watching flies and living off my mother's money",
but he was actually somewhat more industrious than that may sound. With the husband/wife team of Janet and Luis Alcoriza, he wrote the scenario for ''Si usted no puede, yo sí'', which was filmed in 1950 by Julián Soler.
He also continued developing the idea for a surrealistic film called ''Ilegible, hijo de flauta'', with the poet Juan Larrea (poet), Juan Larrea. Dancigers pointed out to him that there was currently public interest in films about street urchins, so Buñuel scoured the back streets and slums of Mexico City in search of material, interviewing social workers about street gang warfare and murdered children.
During this period, Dancigers was busy producing films for the actor/director Fernando Soler, one of the most durable of Mexican film personalities, having been referred to as the "national paterfamilias". Although Soler typically preferred to direct his own films, for their next collaboration, ''El Gran Calavera'', based on a play by Adolfo Torrado, he decided that doing both jobs would be too much trouble, so he asked Dancigers to find someone who could be trusted to handle the technical aspects of the directorial duties.
Buñuel welcomed the opportunity, stating that: "I amused myself with the montage, the constructions, the angles...All of that interested me because I was still an apprentice in so-called 'normal' cinema."
As a result of his work on this film, he developed a technique for making films cheaply and quickly by limiting them to 125 shots.
''El Gran Calavera'' was completed in 16 days at a cost of 400,000 pesos (approximately $46,000 US at 1948 exchange rates).
The picture has been described as "a hilarious screwball send-up of the Mexican nouveau riche...a wild roller coaster of mistaken identity, sham marriages and misfired suicides",
and it was a big hit at the box office in Mexico. In 2013, the picture was re-made by Mexican director Gary Alazraki under the title ''The Noble Family''. In 1949, Buñuel renounced his Spanish citizenship to become a Naturalization, naturalized Mexican.
The commercial success of ''El Gran Calavera'' enabled Buñuel to redeem a promise he had extracted from Dancigers, which was that if Buñuel could deliver a money-maker, Dancigers would guarantee "a degree of freedom" on the next film project.
Knowing that Dancigers was uncomfortable with experimentalism, especially when it might affect the bottom line, Buñuel proposed a commercial project titled ''¡Mi huerfanito jefe!'', about a juvenile street vendor who can't sell his final lottery ticket, which ends up being the winner and making him rich. Dancigers was open to the idea, but instead of a "''feuilleton''", he suggested making "something rather more serious".
During his recent researches through the slums of Mexico City, Buñuel had read a newspaper account of a twelve-year-old boy's body being found on a garbage dump, and this became the inspiration, and final scene, for the film, eventually called ''
Los Olvidados''.
The film tells the story of a street gang of children who terrorize their impoverished neighborhood, at one point brutalizing a blind man and at another assaulting a legless man who moves around on a dolly, which they toss down a hill.
Film historian Carl J. Mora has said of ''Los Olvidados'' that the director "visualized poverty in a radically different way from the traditional forms of Mexican melodrama. Buñuel's street children are not 'ennobled' by their desperate struggle for survival; they are in fact ruthless predators who are not better than their equally unromanticized victims".
The film was made quickly (18 days) and cheaply (450,000 pesos), with Buñuel's fee being the equivalent of $2,000.
During filming, a number of members of the crew resisted the production in a variety of ways: one technician confronted Buñuel and asked why he didn't make a "real" Mexican movie "rather than a miserable picture like this one";
the film's hairdresser quit on the spot over a scene in which the protagonist's mother refuses to give him food ("In Mexico, no mother would say that to her son.");
another staff member urged Buñuel to abandon shooting on a "garbage heap", noting that there were many "lovely residential neighborhoods like Lomas de Chapultepec, Las Lomas" that were available;
while Pedro de Urdimalas, one of the scriptwriters, refused to allow his name in the credits.

This hostility was also felt by those who attended the movie's première in Mexico City on 9 November 1950, when ''Los Olvidados'' was taken by many as an insult to Mexican sensibilities and to the Mexican nation.
At one point, the audience shrieked in shock as one of the characters looked straight into the camera and hurled a rotten egg at it, leaving a gelatinous, opaque ooze on the lens for a few moments. In his memoir, Buñuel recalled that after the initial screening, the painter Frida Kahlo refused to speak to him, while poet León Felipe's wife had to be restrained physically from attacking him.
There were even calls to have Buñuel's Mexican citizenship revoked.
Dancigers, panicked by what he feared would be a complete debacle, quickly commissioned an alternate "happy" ending to the film,
and also tacked on a preface showing stock footage of the skylines of New York City, London and Paris with voice-over commentary to the effect that behind the wealth of all the great cities of the world can be found poverty and malnourished children, and that Mexico City "that large modern city, is no exception". Regardless, attendance was so poor that Dancigers withdrew the film after only three days in theaters.
Through the determined efforts of future Nobel Prize winner for Literature Octavio Paz, who at the time was in Mexico's diplomatic service, ''Los Olvidados'' was chosen to represent Mexico at the
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Film Festival (; ), until 2003 called the International Film Festival ('), is the most prestigious film festival in the world.
Held in Cannes, France, it previews new films of all genres, including documentaries, from all around ...
of 1951, and Paz promoted the film assiduously by distributing a supportive manifesto and parading outside the cinema with a placard. Opinion in general was enthusiastic, with the Surrealists (Breton and poet Jacques Prévert) and other artistic intellectuals (painter Marc Chagall and poet/dramatist/filmmaker
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau ( , ; ; 5 July 1889 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, film director, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost avant-garde artists of the 20th-c ...
) laudatory, but the communist critic Georges Sadoul objected to what he saw as the film's "bourgeois morality" because of its positive depictions of a "bourgeois teacher" and a "bourgeois state" in rehabilitating street children, as well as a scene in which the police demonstrate their utility by stopping a pederast from assaulting a child. Buñuel won the Best Director prize that year at Cannes, and also won the International Federation of Film Critics, FIPRESCI International Critics' Award. The film was reissued in Mexico where it ran for two months to much greater acceptance and profit. ''Los Olvidados'' and its triumph at Cannes made Buñuel an instant world celebrity and the most important Spanish-speaking film director in the world. In 2003, ''Los Olvidados'' was inscribed by UNESCO in the Memory of the World Programme#Memory of the World Register, Memory of the World International Register, calling it: "the most important document in Spanish about the marginal lives of children in contemporary large cities".
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 21 films over 18 years. For many critics, although there were occasional widely acknowledged masterpieces like ''Los Olvidados'' and ''
Él'' (1953), the majority of his output consisted of generic fare which was adapted to the norms of the national film industry, frequently adopting melodramatic conventions that appealed to local tastes.
Other commentators, however, have written of the deceptive complexity and intensity of many of these films, arguing that, collectively, they, "bring a philosophical depth and power to his cinema, together offering a sustained meditation on ideas of religion, class inequity, violence and desire".
Although Buñuel usually had little choice regarding the selection of these projects,
they often deal with themes that were central to his lifelong concerns:
* sexual pathology: ''Él'' (1953), ''Ensayo de un crimen'' (1955), and ''Wuthering Heights (1954 film), Abismos de pasión'' (1954)
*the destructive effects of rampant machismo: ''El Bruto'', (1953), ''El río y la muerte'', (1955);
*the blurring of fantasy and reality: ''Subida al cielo'' (1952), ''La ilusión viaja en tranvía'' (1954);
*the disruptive status of women in a male-dominated culture: ''Susana (film), Susana'' (1951), ''La hija del engaño'' (1951—a remake of the Filmófono production ''Don Quintín el amargao'' of 16 years earlier), ''Una mujer sin amor'' (1952); and
*the absurdity of the religious life:
''Nazarín'' (1959) and ''Simón del desierto'' (1965).
As busy as he was during the 1950s and early 1960s, there were still many film projects that Buñuel had to abandon due to lack of financing or studio support, including a cherished plan to film Mexican novelist Juan Rulfo's ''Pedro Páramo'', of which he said how much he enjoyed "the crossing from the mysterious to the real, almost without transition. I really like this mixture of reality and fantasy, but I don't know how to bring it to the screen." Other unrealized projects during his lifetime included adaptations of André Gide's ''Les caves du Vatican''; Benito Pérez Galdós's ''Fortunata y Jacinta'', ''Doña Perfecta'', and ''Ángel Guerra''; Evelyn Waugh's ''The Loved One (book), The Loved One''; William Golding's ''Lord of the Flies''; Dalton Trumbo's ''Johnny Got His Gun''; J. K. Huysmans's ''Là-bas (novel), Là-Bas''; Matthew Lewis (writer), Matthew Lewis's ''The Monk''; José Donoso's ''Hell Has No Limits, Lugar sin límites''; a film of four stories based on Carlos Fuentes's ''Aura (Fuentes), Aura''; and Julio Cortázar's ''Final del juego, Las ménades''.
1954–1965: International work

As much as he welcomed steady employment in the Mexican film industry, Buñuel was quick to seize opportunities to re-emerge onto the international film scene and to engage with themes that were not necessarily focused on Mexican preoccupations.
His first chance came in 1954, when Dancigers partnered with Henry F. Ehrlich, of United Artists, to co-produce a film version of Daniel Defoe's ''Robinson Crusoe'', using a script developed by the Canadian writer Hugo Butler. The film was produced by George Pepper, the former executive secretary of the Hollywood Democratic Committee. Both Butler and Pepper were emigres from Hollywood who had run afoul of authorities seeking out communists.
The result, ''Adventures of Robinson Crusoe'', was Buñuel's first color film. Buñuel was given much more time than usual for the filming (three months), which was accomplished on location in Manzanillo, a Pacific seaport with a lush jungle interior, and was shot simultaneously in English and Spanish.
When the film was released in the United States, its young star Dan O'Herlihy used his own money to fund a Los Angeles run for the film and gave free admission to all members of the Screen Actors Guild, who in turn rewarded the little-known actor with his only Oscar award, Oscar nomination.
In the mid-1950s, Buñuel got the chance to work again in France on international co-productions. The result was what critic Raymond Durgnat has called the director's "revolutionary triptych", in that each of the three films is "openly, or by implication, a study in the morality and tactics of armed revolution against a right-wing dictatorship".
The first, ''Cela s'appelle l'aurore'' (Franco-Italian, 1956) required Buñuel and the "'Pataphysics, pataphysical" writer Jean Ferry to adapt a novel by Emmanuel Roblès after the celebrated writer Jean Genet failed to deliver a script after having been paid in full.
The second film was ''Death in the Garden, La Mort en ce jardin'' (Franco-Mexican, 1956), which was adapted by Buñuel and his frequent collaborator Luis Alcoriza from a novel by the Belgian writer José-André Lacour. The final part of the "triptych" was ''La Fièvre Monte à El Pao'' (Franco-Mexican, 1959), the last film of the popular French star Gérard Philipe, who died in the final stages of the production. At one point during the filming, Buñuel asked Philipe, who was visibly dying of cancer, why the actor was making this film, and Philipe responded by asking the director the same question, to which both said they did not know.
Buñuel was later to explain that he was so strapped for cash that he, "took everything that was offered to me, as long as it wasn't humiliating".
In 1960, Buñuel re-teamed with scenarist Hugo Butler and organizer George Pepper, allegedly his favorite producer, to make his second English-language film, a US/Mexico co-production called ''The Young One'', based on a short story by writer and former CIA-agent Peter Matthiessen. This film has been called "a surprisingly uncompromising study of racism and sexual desire, set on a remote island in the Deep South"
and has been described by critic Ed Gonzalez as "salacious enough to make Elia Kazan's ''Baby Doll'' and Louis Malle, Luis Malle's ''Pretty Baby (1978 film), Pretty Baby'' blush".
Although the film won a special award at the Cannes Film Festival for its treatment of racial discrimination,
the US critics were so hostile upon its release that Buñuel was later to say that "a Harlem newspaper even wrote that I should be hung upside down from a lamppost on Fifth Avenue...I made this film with love, but it never had a chance."
At the 1960 Cannes Festival, Buñuel was approached by the young director Carlos Saura, whose film ''The Delinquents (1960 film), Los Golfos'' had been entered officially to represent Spain. Two years earlier, Saura had partnered with Juan Antonio Bardem and Luis García Berlanga to form a production company called UNINCI,
and the group was keen to get Buñuel to make a new film in his native country as part of their overall goal of creating a uniquely Spanish brand of cinema.
At the same time, Mexican actress Silvia Pinal was eager to work with Buñuel and talked her producer-husband Gustavo Alatriste into providing additional funding for the project with the understanding that the director, who Pinal described as "a man worshiped and idolized", would be given "absolute freedom" in carrying out the work.
Finally, Buñuel agreed to work again in Spain when further support was provided by producer Pere Portabella's company ''Film 59''.
Buñuel and his co-scenarist Julio Alejandro drafted a preliminary screenplay for ''
Viridiana'', which critic Andrew Sarris has described as incorporating "a plot which is almost too lurid to synopsize even in these enlightened times",
dealing with rape, incest, hints of necrophilia, animal cruelty and sacrilege, and submitted it to the Spanish censor, who, to the surprise of nearly everyone, approved it after requesting only minor modifications and one significant change to the ending.
Although Buñuel accommodated the censor's demands, he came up with a final scene that was even more provocative than the scene it replaced: "even more immoral", as Buñuel was later to observe.
Since Buñuel had more than adequate resources, top-flight technical and artistic crews, and experienced actors, filming of ''Viridiana'' (which took place on location and at Bardem's studios in Madrid) went smoothly and quickly.
Buñuel submitted a cutting copy to the censors and then arranged for his son, Juan Luis, to smuggle the negatives to Paris for the final editing and mixing, ensuring that the authorities would not have an opportunity to view the finished product before its planned submission as Spain's official entry to the 1961 Cannes Festival.
Spain's director general of cinematography José Muñoz-Fontán presented the film on the last day of the festival and then, on the urging of Portabella and Bardem, appeared in person to accept the top prize, the , which the film shared with the French entry ''Une aussi longue absence'', directed by Henri Colpi.
Within days, ''l'Osservatore Romano'', the Vatican's official organ, denounced the film as an insult not only to Catholicism but to Christianity.
Muñoz-Fontán was dismissed from his government post,
the film was banned in Spain for the next 17 years, all mention of it in the press was prohibited, and the two Spanish production companies UNINCI and ''Film 59'' were disbanded.
Buñuel went on to make two more films in Mexico with Pinal and Alatriste, ''El ángel exterminador'' (1962) and ''Simón del desierto'' (1965) and was later to say that Alatriste had been the one producer who gave him the most freedom in creative expression.
In 1963, actor Fernando Rey, one of the stars of ''Viridiana'', introduced Buñuel to producer Serge Silberman, a Polish entrepreneur who had fled to Paris when his family died in the Holocaust and had worked with several renowned French directors, including Jean-Pierre Melville, Jacques Becker, Marcel Camus and Christian-Jaque.
Silberman proposed that the two make an adaptation of Octave Mirbeau's ''The Diary of a Chambermaid (novel), The Diary of a Chambermaid'', which Buñuel had read several times.
Buñuel wanted to do the filming in Mexico with Pinal, but Silberman insisted it be done in France.
Pinal was so determined to work again with Buñuel that she was ready to move to France, learn the language and even work for nothing in order to get the part of Célestine (Mirbeau), Célestine, the title character.
Silberman, however, wanted French actress Jeanne Moreau to play the role, so he put Pinal off by telling her that Moreau, too, was willing to act with no fee. Ultimately, Silberman got his way, leaving Pinal so disappointed that she was later to claim that Alatriste's failure to help her secure this part led to the breakup of their marriage.
When Buñuel requested a French-speaking writer with whom to collaborate on the screenplay, Silberman suggested the 32-year-old Jean-Claude Carrière, an actor whose previous screenwriting credits included only a few films for the comic star/director Pierre Étaix, but once Buñuel learned that Carrière was the heir to a wine-growing family, the newcomer was hired on the spot.
At first, Carrière found it difficult to work with Buñuel, because the young man was so deferential that he never challenged any of Buñuel's ideas, until, at Buñuel's covert insistence, Silberman told Carrière to stand up to Buñuel now and then; as Carrière was later to say: "In a way, Buñuel needed an opponent. He didn't need a secretary – he needed someone to contradict him and oppose him and to make suggestions."
The finished 1964 film, ''
Diary of a Chambermaid'', became the first of several to be made by the team of Buñuel, Carrière and Silberman. Carrière later said "Without me and without Serge Silberman, the producer, perhaps Buñuel would not have made so many films after he was 65. We really encouraged him to work. That's for sure."
This was the second filmed version of Mirbeau's novel, the first being The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946 film), a 1946 Hollywood production directed by Jean Renoir, which Buñuel refused to view for fear of being influenced by the famous French director, whom he venerated.
Buñuel's version, while admired by many, has often been compared unfavorably to Renoir's, with a number of critics claiming that Renoir's ''Diary'' fits better in Renoir's overall ''oeuvre'', while Buñuel's ''Diary'' is not sufficiently "Buñuelian".
After the 1964 release of ''Diary'', Buñuel again tried to make a film of Matthew Lewis's ''The Monk'', a project on which he had worked, on and off, since 1938, according to producer Pierre Braunberger.
He and Carrière wrote a screenplay, but were unable to obtain funding, which was realized in 1973 under the direction of Buñuel devotee Adonis A. Kyrou, Ado Kyrou, with considerable assistance from both Buñuel and Carrière.
In 1965, Buñuel managed to work again with Silvia Pinal in what was his last Mexican feature, co-starring Claudio Brook, ''Simón del desierto''.
Pinal was keenly interested in continuing to work with Buñuel, trusting him completely and frequently stating that he brought out the best in her; however, this was their last collaboration.
1966–1983: Acclaim and final films

In 1966, Buñuel was contacted by Robert and Raymond Hakim, the Hakim brothers, Robert and Raymond, Egyptian-French producers who specialized in sexy films directed by star filmmakers, who offered him the opportunity to direct a film version of Joseph Kessel's novel ''Belle de Jour (novel), Belle de Jour'', a book about an affluent young woman who leads a double life as a prostitute, and that had caused a scandal upon its first publication in 1928. Buñuel did not like Kessel's novel, considering it "a bit of a soap opera",
but he took on the challenge because: "I found it interesting to try to turn something I didn't like into something I did."
So he and Carrière set out enthusiastically to interview women in the brothels of Madrid to learn about their sexual fantasies.
Buñuel also was not happy about the choice of the 22-year-old Catherine Deneuve for the title role, feeling that she had been foisted upon him by the Hakim brothers and Deneuve's lover at the time, director François Truffaut.
As a result, both actress and director found working together difficult, with Deneuve claiming, "I felt they showed more of me than they'd said they were going to. There were moments when I felt totally used. I was very unhappy,"
and Buñuel deriding her prudery on the set.
The resulting film has been described by film critic
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...
as "possibly the best-known erotic film of modern times, perhaps the best", even though, as another critic has written, "in terms of explicit sexual activity, there is little in ''Belle de jour'' we might not see in a Doris Day comedy from the same year". It was Buñuel's most successful film at the box office.
Critics have noted Buñuel's habit of following up a commercial or critical success with a more personal, idiosyncratic film that might have less chance of popular esteem.
After the worldwide success of his 1967 ''Belle de Jour'', and upon viewing Jean-Luc Godard's film ''La Chinoise'', Buñuel, who had wanted to make a film about Catholic heresies for years, told Carrière: "If that is what today's cinema is like, then we can make a film about heresies."
The two spent months researching Catholic history and created the 1969 film ''The Milky Way (1969 film), The Milky Way'', a "picaresque road film"
that tells the story of two vagabonds on Camino de Santiago, pilgrimage to the tomb of the Apostle James at Santiago de Compostela, during which they travel through time and space to take part in situations illustrating heresies that arose from the six major Catholic dogmas.
Vincent Canby, reviewing the film in the ''New York Times'', compared it to George Stevens's blockbuster ''The Greatest Story Ever Told'', in that Buñuel had made a film about Jesus casting nearly all the famous French performers of the time in cameo roles. ''The Milky Way'' was banned in Italy, only to have the Catholic Church intervene on its behalf.
The 1970 film ''Tristana (film), Tristana'' is a film about a young woman who is seduced and manipulated by her guardian, who attempts to thwart her romance with a young artist and who eventually induces her to marry him after she loses one of her legs due to a tumor. It has been considered by scholar Beth Miller the least understood of Buñuel's films, and consequently one of the most underrated, due to a "consistent failure to apprehend its political and, especially, its socialist-feminist statement".
Buñuel had wanted to make a film of Benito Pérez Galdós's novel ''Tristana (novel), Tristana'' as early as 1952, even though he considered Galdós's book the author's weakest.
After finishing ''Viridiana'' and in the wake of the scandal its release caused in 1962, the Spanish censor turned down this project,
and Buñuel had to wait for 8 years before he could receive backing from the Spanish production company Época Films.
The censors had threatened to deny permission for the film on the grounds that it encouraged dueling, so Buñuel had to approach the subject matter very gingerly, in addition to making concessions to his French/Italian/Spanish producers, who insisted on casting two of the three primary roles with actors not of Buñuel's choosing: Franco Nero and Catherine Deneuve.
On this occasion, however, Deneuve and Buñuel had a more mutually satisfactory working relationship, with Deneuve telling an interviewer, "but in the end, you know, it was actually rather a wonderful shoot. ''Tristana'' is one of my favorite films. Personally, as an actress, I prefer ''Tristana'' to ''Belle de Jour''."
The germ of the idea for their next film together, ''
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
''The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie'' () is a 1972 surrealist satirical black comedy film directed by Luis Buñuel, who wrote the screenplay in collaboration with Jean-Claude Carrière. The narrative concerns a group of French bourgeoisie an ...
'' (1972) came from Buñuel and Silberman discussing uncanny repetition in everyday life; Silberman told an anecdote about how he had invited some friends for dinner at his house, only to forget about it, so that, on the night of the dinner party, he was absent and his wife was in her nightclothes.
The film tells of a group of affluent friends who are continually stymied in their attempts to eat a meal together, a situation that a number of critics have contrasted to the opposite dilemma of the characters in ''
The Exterminating Angel
''The Exterminating Angel'' () is a 1962 Mexican surrealism, surrealist black comedy film written and directed by Luis Buñuel. Starring Silvia Pinal and produced by Pinal's then-husband Gustavo Alatriste, the film tells the story of a group of ...
'', where guests of a dinner party are mysteriously unable to leave after having completed their meal.
For this film, Buñuel, Silberman and Carrière assembled a top-flight cast of European performers, "a veritable rogues' gallery of French art-house cinema", according to one critic.
For the first time, Buñuel made use of a video monitors, video-playback monitor, which allowed him to make much more extensive use of crane shots and elaborate tracking shots, and enabled him to cut the film in the camera and eliminate the need for Re-shoot, reshoots.
Filming required only two months and Buñuel claimed that editing took only one day.
When the film was released, Silberman decided to skip the Cannes Festival in order to concentrate on getting it nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, which it won, leading Buñuel to express his contempt for a process that relied on the judgment of "2500 idiots, including for example the assistant dress designer of the studio".
As was his habit, Buñuel took advantage of the popular success of ''Discreet Charm'' to make one of the "puzzling, idiosyncratic films he ''really'' wanted to make".
In 1973, at the Monastery of El Paular, Monastery of Paular in the Spanish Somosierra, he wrote the screenplay for ''The Phantom of Liberty'' (1974) with Carrière for production by Silberman and his Hollywood partners.
The resulting film is a series of 12 distinctive episodes with separate protagonists, linked together only by following a character from one episode to another in a relay-race manner. Buñuel has stated that he made the film as a tribute to poet Benjamin Péret, a founding member of French Surrealism,
and called it his "most Surrealist film".
Buñuel's final film was ''
That Obscure Object of Desire'' (1977), adapted by Buñuel and Carrière from an 1898 novel by Pierre Louÿs called ''La Femme et le pantin'', which had already been used as the basis of films directed by
Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg (; born Jonas Sternberg; May 29, 1894 – December 22, 1969) was an American filmmaker whose career successfully spanned the transition from the Silent film, silent to the Sound film, sound era, during which he worked with mos ...
(''The Devil Is a Woman (1935 film), The Devil Is a Woman'', 1935) and Julien Duvivier (''La Femme et le Pantin'', 1959). The film, which tells the story of an older man who is obsessed by a young woman who continually evades his attempts to consummate a sexual relationship, starred the Spanish actor Fernando Rey, appearing in his fourth Buñuel film. Initially, the part of the young woman was to be played by Maria Schneider (actress), Maria Schneider, who had achieved international fame for her roles in ''Last Tango in Paris'' and ''The Passenger (1975 film), The Passenger'', but once shooting started, according to Carrière, her drug usage resulted in a "lackluster and dull" performance that caused tempestuous arguments with Buñuel on the set and her eventual dismissal. Silberman, the producer, decided to abandon the project at that point, but was convinced by Buñuel to continue shooting with two different actresses, Ángela Molina and Carole Bouquet playing the same role in alternating sequences throughout the film. In his autobiography, Buñuel claimed that this unusual casting decision was his own idea after drinking two dry martinis, saying: "If I had to list all the benefits derived from alcohol, it would be endless". Others have reported that Carrière had first broached the idea while developing the film's scenario, but had been brushed off by Buñuel as "the whim of a rainy day".
After the release of ''
That Obscure Object of Desire'', Buñuel retired from filmmaking.
In 1982, he wrote (along with Carrière) his autobiography, ''Mon Dernier Soupir'' (translated into English as ''My Last Sigh'' in the U.S., ''My Last Breath'' in the UK), which provides an account of his 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 as well as antics, like dressing up as a nun and walking around town.
Personal life
Starting at the age of 17, Buñuel steadily dated the future poet and dramatist Concha Méndez, with whom he vacationed every summer at San Sebastián. He introduced her to his friends at the Residencia as his fiancée.
After five years, she broke off the relationship, citing Buñuel's "insufferable character".
During his student years, Buñuel became an accomplished hypnotist. He claimed that once, while calming a hysterical prostitute through hypnosis, hypnotic suggestion, he inadvertently put one of the several bystanders into a trance as well.
He was often to insist that watching movies was a form of hypnosis: "This kind of cinematographic hypnosis is no doubt due to the darkness of the theatre and to the rapidly changing scenes, lights, and camera movements, which weaken the spectator's critical intelligence and exercise over him a kind of fascination."
Referring to Buñuel's interest in hypnosis, Anthony Lane wrote, "You can easily picture yourself being hypnotized by this man; sit through a sample of his movies, and you will think you have been."
Marriage
In 1926 he met his future wife, Jeanne Rucar Lefebvre, a gymnastics teacher who had won a bronze medal at the 1924 Paris Olympics.
Buñuel courted her in a formal Aragonese manner, complete with a chaperone,
and they married in 1934
despite a warning by Jean Epstein when Buñuel first proposed in 1930: "Jeanne, you are making a mistake...It's not right for you, don't marry him."
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 their grandson.
Illness and death
In his seventies, Buñuel once told his friend, novelist Carlos Fuentes: "I'm not afraid of death. I'm afraid of dying alone in a hotel room, with my bags open and a shooting script on the night table. I must know whose fingers will close my eyes."
According to his wife, Jeanne, Buñuel died in Mexico City in 1983 from diabetes complications. Fuentes has recounted that Buñuel spent his last week in hospital discussing theology with the Jesuit brother Julián Pablo Fernández, a long time friend.
His funeral was very private, involving only family and close friends, among them poets Octavio Paz and Homero Aridjis.
Technique and influences
Buñuel's technique of filmmaking was strongly influenced by mise-en-scène, sound editing and use of music. The influences on his filmmaking have included a positive relationship to surrealism and a critical approach to atheism and religion. Buñuel's style of directing was extremely economical; he shot films in a few weeks, rarely deviating from his script (the scene in ''Tristana (film), Tristana'' where Catherine Deneuve exposes her breasts to Saturno – but not the audience – being a noted exception) and shooting as much as possible in order to minimize editing time. He remained true throughout his working life to an operating philosophy that he articulated at the beginning of his career in 1928: "The guiding idea, the silent procession of images that are concrete, decisive, measured in space and time—in a word, the film—was first projected inside the brain of the filmmaker".
In this, Buñuel has been compared with Alfred Hitchcock, another director famous for precision, efficiency and preplanning, for whom actually shooting the film was an anticlimax, because each man knew, in Buñuel's words, "exactly how each scene will be shot and what the final montage will be". According to actress Jeanne Moreau: "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."
Buñuel is often cited as an auteur; Ingmar Bergman once wrote "Buñuel nearly always made Buñuel films". Despite his variety, John Huston believed that, regardless of genre, a Buñuel film is so distinctive as to be instantly recognizable. Writer Octavio Paz called Buñuel's work "the marriage of the film image to the poetic image, creating a new reality...scandalous and subversive".
David Thomson (film critic), David Thomson names him as one of the greatest directors, adding "He is as intent on comedy as Kafka was, as little intent on showing off style, and as much a victim as the joke he tells."
Retrospectives
* In 1994, a retrospective of Buñuel's works was organized by the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle in Bonn, as homage to one of the most internationally revered figures in world cinema.
This was followed in the summer of 1996 by a commemoration of the centenary of the birth of cinema held by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, which included a unique retrospective, jointly sponsored by the King of Spain and the President of Mexico, called ''¿Buñuel!. La mirada del siglo'', honoring his special status as Spanish cinema's most emblematic figure.
* A secondary school in
Zaragoza
Zaragoza (), traditionally known in English as Saragossa ( ), is the capital city of the province of Zaragoza and of the autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It lies by the Ebro river and its tributaries, the ...
, Spain has been named for Buñuel: Instituto de Educación Secundaria Ies Luis Buñuel. Liceo Español Luis Buñuel, a Spanish international school, is in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, near Paris.
* In Calanda, Spain a bust of the head of Luis Buñuel is on display at the Centro Buñuel Calanda (CBC), a museum devoted to the director. The mission of the CBC is to serve as a reference center both for connoisseurs of Buñuel and for anyone interested in the arts of
Aragon
Aragon ( , ; Spanish and ; ) is an autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. In northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces of Spain, ...
.
* One of the main theatres at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès, where the
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Film Festival (; ), until 2003 called the International Film Festival ('), is the most prestigious film festival in the world.
Held in Cannes, France, it previews new films of all genres, including documentaries, from all around ...
is held, is named after him: ''Salle Buñuel''.
* To mark the centenary of his birth, in 2000 the Cannes festival partnered with the Spanish film industry, to pay tribute to Luis Buñuel. This tribute consisted of three events: (1) the inauguration, for Cannes 2000, of the Palace's new Luis Buñuel room, (2) an original exhibition organized by Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales entitled "The Secret World of Buñuel", and (3) an exceptional projection of ''Viridiana'', the Palme d'Or winner in 1961, in the presence of specially invited artists.
* The Luis Buñuel Film Institute (LBFI) is housed in the The Downtown Independent, Downtown Independent Theatre, Los Angeles, and has as its mission: "to form the vital and innovative arena for the promotion of the work of Luis Buñuel, and a seminal resource for the development of new research, knowledge and scholarship on his life and work, extending across his body of films and writings".
Filmography
Awards, influence, and legacy
Buñuel was given the Career Golden Lion in 1982 by the Venice Film Festival and the International Federation of Film Critics, FIPRESCI Prize – Honorable Mention in 1969 by the
Berlin International Film Festival
The Berlin International Film Festival (), usually called the Berlinale (), is an annual film festival held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festival has been held every February since 1978 and is one of Europ ...
. In 1977, he received the
National Prize for Arts and Sciences for Fine Arts. At the 11th Moscow International Film Festival in 1979, he was awarded the Honorable Prize for his contribution to cinema.
He was nominated twice for the
Nobel Prize in Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning ''for'' Literature (), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in ...
in
1968
Events January–February
* January 1968, January – The I'm Backing Britain, I'm Backing Britain campaign starts spontaneously.
* January 5 – Prague Spring: Alexander Dubček is chosen as leader of the Communist Party of Cze ...
and
1972
Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using Solar time, ...
.
Fifteen of his films are included in the ''They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?'' list of the 1,000 greatest films of all time, second only to Jean-Luc Godard, with sixteen, and he ranks number 13 on their list of the top 250 directors.
He has influenced directors such as Woody Allen,
Godfrey Reggio, Aki Kaurismäki,
Gaspar Noé,
and Jonathan Glazer.
Documentaries about Buñuel
* ''Dans l'oeil de Luis Buñuel''. France, 2013, 54 min., book and director: François Lévy-Kuentz, Producer: KUIV Productions, arte France.
* ''El último guión – Buñuel en la memoria''. Spain, Germany, France, 2008, 45 min., Book and director: Javier Espada und Gaizka Urresti, Producer: Imval Producciones
* ''Tras Nazarín (Following Nazarín)''. Spain/Mexico, 2015. Directed by Javier Espada. Ircania Producciones. Utilizes still photos taken by Buñuel and Manuel Álvarez Bravo to link the images of the film to the Mexican countryside. Includes interviews with Jean Claude Carrière, Ignacio López Tarso, Silvia Pinal, Arturo Ripstein and Carlos Reygadas, along with critics and film scholars.
In popular culture
Buñuel has been portrayed as a character in many films and television productions:
*A portion of the television mini-series ''Lorca, muerte de un poeta'' (1987–1988), directed by Juan Antonio Bardem recreates the student years of Buñuel, Lorca and Dalí, with Fernando Valverde portraying Buñuel in two episodes.
* He was played by Dimiter Guerasimof in the 1991 biopic ''Dalí'', directed by Antoni Ribas, despite the fact that Dalí and his attorney had written to Ribas objecting to the project in its early stages in 1985.
* Buñuel appeared as a character in Alejandro Pelayo's 1993 film ''Miroslava'', based on the life of actress Miroslava (actress), Miroslava Stern, who committed suicide after appearing in ''Ensayo de un crimen'' (1955).
* Buñuel was played by three actors, El Gran Wyoming (old age), Pere Arquillué (young adult) and Juan Carlos Jiménez Marín (child), in Carlos Saura's 2001 fantasy, ''Buñuel y la mesa del rey Salomón'', which tells of Buñuel, Lorca and Dalí setting out in search of the mythical table of King Salomón, which is thought to have the power to see into the past, the present and the future.
* Buñuel was a character in a 2001 television miniseries ''Severo Ochoa: La conquista de un Nobel'', on the life of the Spanish émigré and Nobel Prize winner in medicine, who was also at the Residencia de Estudiantes during Buñuel's time there.
* Matt Lucas portrayed Buñuel in Richard Curson Smith's 2002 TV movie ''Surrealissimo: The Scandalous Success of Salvador Dalí'', a comedy depicting Dalí's "trial" by the Surrealists in 1934 for his pro-Hitler sympathies.
* A 2005 short called ''The Death of Salvador Dali'', directed by Delaney Bishop, contains sequences in which Buñuel appears, played by Alejandro Cardenas.
* Paul Morrison (director), Paul Morrison's ''Little Ashes'' hypothesizes a love affair between Dalí and Lorca, with Buñuel (played by Matthew McNulty) looking on suspiciously.
* Buñuel, played by Adrien de Van, is one of many notable personalities encountered by Woody Allen's protagonist in ''Midnight in Paris'' (2011).
* In 2019, Fermín Solís published a graphic novel titled ''Buñuel en el Laberinto de las Tortugas'' (English translation, 2021: ''Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles'') depicting the creation of ''Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan''.
* Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles, An animated film of the book was released in 2019, directed by Salvador Simó.
* Buñel's films ''
The Exterminating Angel
''The Exterminating Angel'' () is a 1962 Mexican surrealism, surrealist black comedy film written and directed by Luis Buñuel. Starring Silvia Pinal and produced by Pinal's then-husband Gustavo Alatriste, the film tells the story of a group of ...
'' (1962) and ''
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
''The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie'' () is a 1972 surrealist satirical black comedy film directed by Luis Buñuel, who wrote the screenplay in collaboration with Jean-Claude Carrière. The narrative concerns a group of French bourgeoisie an ...
'' (1972) were adapted into a musical by Stephen Sondheim and David Ives titled, ''Here We Are (musical), Here We Are'' (2023) which premiered at The Shed (arts center), The Shed in New York City.
See also
Notes
Further reading
* J. Francisco Aranda ''Luis Buñuel: Biografia Critica'' (Spanish edition) Paperback: 479 pages. Lumen;new and revised edition (1975), . .
*Robert Bresson and Luis Buñuel. ''La politica de los autores/ The Politics of Authors'' (La Memoria Del Cine) (Spanish edition) Paidos Iberica Ediciones S a (April 2003), 189 pages,
* Luis Buñuel, ''Mon Dernier Supir'' (1982), translated into Spanish as ''Mi Ultimo Suspiro'', and into English as ''My Last Sigh'' (New York: Alfred Knopf 1983) or ''My Last Breath'' (London: Jonathan Cape 1984).
*
* Luis Buñuel, Manuel Lopez Villegas. ''Escritos de Luis Bunuel (Fundidos En Negro / Fused in Black)'' (Spanish edition), Editorial Paginas de Espuma; Paperback, 2 February 2000, 296 pp,
* Luis Buñuel, Rafæl Buñuel, Juan Luis Buñuel (Afterword). ''An Unspeakable Betrayal: Selected Writings of Luis Buñuel.'' Publisher: University of California Press; First edition (6 April 2000), pp 277,
''Luis Buñuel: The Red Years, 1929–1939'' (Wisconsin Film Studies).*Luis Buñuel. ''El discreto encanto de la burguesia (Coleccion Voz imagen'', Serie cine ; 26) (Spanish rdition) Paperback – 159 pages, Ayma, first edition (1973),
*Luis Buñuel. ''El fantasma de la libertad'' (Serie cine) (Spanish edition) Serie cine Paperback, Ayma, first edition (1975), 148 pages,
*Luis Buñuel. ''Obra literaria'' (Spanish rdition) Publisher: Heraldo de Aragon (1982), 291 pages,
*Luis Buñuel. ''L'Age d'or: Correspondance Luis Bunuel-Charles de Noailles : lettres et documents (1929–1976'') (Les Cahiers du Musee national d'art moderne) Centre Georges Pompidou (publ), 1993, pp 190,
* 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.
*
* 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''.
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* Michael Kolle
Retrieved 26 July 2006.
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External links
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Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical DatabaseSenses of Cinema: Luis Buñuel's "El" in the Face of Cultural Appropriation and the #MeToo Movement: A Filmmaker's Reappraisal, by Salvador Carrasco
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