Luis Buñuel Portolés ( ) (22
February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-born filmmaker who acquired Mexican citizenship and
worked in Mexico
, France
, and also in
his native Spain
and the
United
States
. He is considered one of Mexico's finest
directors, and also a significant director in the history of
cinema.
Family
Buñuel was
born in Calanda
, province of
Teruel
in the
autonomous community of Aragon
, Spain. His
parents were Leonardo Buñuel and María Portolés; he had two
brothers, Alfonso and Leonardo, and four sisters, Alicia,
Concepción, Margarita and María.He married Jeanne Rucar in 1934 and
they remained married throughout his life. His sons are Rafael and
the director
Juan Luis;
Diego Buñuel, filmmaker and host
of the
National Geographic
Channel's
Don't
Tell my Mother I am in... series, is his grandson.
Formation and Career
Buñuel had
a strict Jesuit education at the
Colegio del Salvador in Zaragoza
from which
he was expelled. Later he went to university in Madrid
.
While
studying at the University of Madrid (current-day Universidad
Complutense de Madrid
) he became a very close friend of painter Salvador Dalí and poet Federico García Lorca, among
other important Spanish artists living in the Residencia de Estudiantes.
Buñuel first studied the
natural
sciences and
agronomy, then
engineering, but later switched to
philosophy. The 2009
biopic
Little Ashes gives an account
of the relationship of Dalí, Lorca, and Buñuel at this time.
First French Period
In 1925,
he moved to Paris
where he
began work as a secretary in an organization called the
International Society of Intellectual Cooperation.
He later found work in France as a director's assistant to
Jean Epstein on
Mauprat (1926),
Mario
Nalpas on
La Sirène des Tropiques (1927) starring
Josephine Baker, and Epstein (his
adaptation of
Edgar Allan Poe)
La
chute de la maison Usher (1928). He then co-wrote and
directed a 16-minute short film
Un
chien andalou (1929) with Dalí. This film, featuring a
series of startling and sometimes horrifying images of
Freudian nature (such as what appears to be the
slow slicing of a woman's eyeball with a razor blade) was
enthusiastically received by French
surrealists of the time, and continues to be
shown regularly in film societies to this day.
He followed this film with
L'Âge
d'or (1930), partly based on the
Marquis de Sade's
120 Days of Sodom. The film was begun
as a second collaboration with Dalí but became Buñuel's solo
project after a falling-out they had before filming began. During
this film he worked around his technical ignorance by filming
mostly in sequence and using nearly every foot of film that he
shot.
L'Âge d'or was read to be an attack on
Catholicism, and thus, precipitated an
even larger scandal than
Un chien andalou. The
right-wing press criticized the film and the
police placed a ban on it that lasted 50 years.
Uneasy interludes abroad
Spain
Following
L'Âge d'or, Buñuel returned to Spain and
directed
Las Hurdes:
Tierra Sin Pan (
Land Without Bread, 1933), a
documentary on
peasant life. This was a convulsive period which
led, in 1936, to the
Spanish Civil
War. The times were changing quickly and Buñuel could see that
someone with his political and artistic sensibilities would have no
place in a
fascist Spain. He co-wrote and
produced a documentary short about the changing political climes in
Spain
España
1936.
United States
In exile
after the Spanish Civil War, Buñuel settled in Hollywood
to capitalize on the short-lived fad of producing
foreign-language versions of American films for sales
abroad. After Buñuel worked on a few
Spanish-language remakes, the industry
eventually turned to the
dubbing of dialogue.
He then left Hollywood
for New York, getting a job at the Museum of Modern Art
from Iris Barry, where he
put together compilation films, and edited a shorter version of
Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda film
glorifying Hitler, Triumph of the Will
(1934).
In his autobiography,
The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí
(1942), Dalí suggested that he had split with Buñuel because the
latter was a
Communist and an
atheist. Buñuel was fired (or resigned) from MOMA,
supposedly after
Cardinal Spellman
of New York went to see Iris Barry, head of the film department at
MOMA. Buñuel then went back to Hollywood where he worked in the
dubbing department of
Warner
Brothers from 1942 to 1946.
- In his 1982 autobiography Mon Dernier soupir (English
translation My Last Sigh published 1983), Buñuel wrote
that he submitted a treatment to Warners about a disembodied hand
which was later adapted (without his consent and without paying him
royalties) into The
Beast with Five Fingers (1946) with Peter Lorre. Buñuel also wrote that, over the
years, he rejected Dalí's attempts at reconciliation.
In 1972, Buñuel, along with his screenwriter
Jean-Claude Carrière and producer
Serge Silberman, was invited by
George Cukor to his house. This
gathering was particularly memorable and other invitees included
Alfred Hitchcock,
Rouben Mamoulian,
Robert Mulligan,
George Stevens,
Billy
Wilder,
Robert Wise and
William Wyler.
Mexican Period
Buñuel
arrived in Mexico in 1946 and
acquired Mexican citizenship in 1949; he relinquished his Spanish
passport as it was not possible to have dual citizenship
then. The first film he directed there was
Gran Casino (1946), produced by
Oscar Dancigers. Buñuel found the plot
boring and it was not hugely successful. He later again
collaborated with Dancigers in creating
El Gran Calavera (1949), a successful
film starring
Fernando Soler. As
Buñuel himself has stated, he learned the techniques of directing
and editing while shooting
El Gran Calavera. Its success
at the
box office encouraged Dancigers to
accept the production of a more ambitious film for which Buñuel,
apart from writing the script, had complete freedom to direct.
The
result was his critically acclaimed Los Olvidados (1950), which was recently
considered by UNESCO
as part of
the world's cultural heritage. Los
Olvidados (and its triumph at Cannes
) made Buñuel an instant world celebrity and the
most important Spanish-speaking film director in the
world.
Buñuel remained in Mexico for the rest of his life, although he
spent periods of time filming in France. In Mexico, he filmed 20
films, including:
Second French Period
After the golden age of the Mexican film industry ended, Buñuel
started to work in France along with Silberman and Carrière. During
this "French Period", Buñuel directed some of his best-known works:
Le Journal d'une femme de chambre (
Diary of a
Chambermaid), free adaptation of the famous
Octave Mirbeau's novel
Le journal d'une femme de
chambre;
Belle de
Jour;
Cet
obscur objet du désir (
That Obscure Object of
Desire); and
Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie
(
The Discreet
Charm of the Bourgeoisie)—as well as some lesser-known
films such as
The Phantom of
Liberty and
La Voie
lactée (
The Milky Way).
Retrospect
After the release of
Cet obscur objet du désir (1977) he
retired from film making, and wrote (with Carrière) an
autobiography,
Mon Dernier Soupir (
My Last Sigh),
published in 1982, which provides an account of Buñuel's life,
friends, and family as well as a representation of his eccentric
personality. In it he recounts dreams, encounters with many well
known writers, actors, and artists such as
Pablo Picasso and
Charlie Chaplin, and antics such as dressing
up as a
nun and walking around town. As one
might deduce from these antics, Buñuel was famous for his atheism.
In a 1960 interview with Michele Manceaux in
L'Express,
Buñuel famously declared: "I am still, thank God, an
atheist."
Buñuel almost seemed to repudiate this statement in a 1977 article
in
The New Yorker. "I'm not
a
Christian, but I'm not an atheist,
either", he said. "I'm weary of hearing that accidental old
aphorism of mine, 'I'm an atheist, thank God.' It's outworn. Dead
leaves. In 1951, I made a small film called
Mexican Bus
Ride, about a village too poor to support a church and a
priest. The place was serene, because no one suffered from guilt.
It's guilt we must escape from, not God."
Buñuel
died in Mexico
City
in 1983.
Influences
Surrealism
Buñuel's films were famous for their surreal imagery; they include
scenes in which chickens populate nightmares, women grow beards,
and aspiring saints are desired by luscious women. Even in the many
movies he made for hire (rather than for his own creative reasons),
such as
Susana and
The Great Madcap, he usually
added his trademark of disturbing and surreal images. Running
through his own films is a backbone of surrealism; Buñuel's world
is one in which an entire dinner party suddenly finds itself
inexplicably unable to leave the room and go home, a bad dream
hands a man a letter which he brings to the doctor the next day,
and where
the devil, if unable to tempt a
saint with a pretty girl, will fly him to a
disco. An example of a more
Dada
influence can be found in
Cet obscur objet du
désir, when Mathieu closes his eyes and has his valet spin
him around and direct him to a map on the wall.
Buñuel never explained or promoted his work. On one occasion, when
his son was interviewed about
The Exterminating Angel,
Buñuel instructed him to give facetious answers; for example, when
asked about the presence of a bear in the socialites' house, Buñuel
fils claimed it was because his father liked bears.
Similarly, the several repeated scenes in the film were explained
as having been put there to increase the running time.
Religion
Many of his films were openly critical of
middle class morals and
organized religion, mocking the
Roman Catholic Church in particular
but religion in general, for hypocrisy. Many of his most famous
films demonstrate this:
- Un chien andalou
(An Andalusian Dog, 1929) – A man drags pianos, upon
which are piled two dead donkeys, two priests, and the tablets of
The Ten Commandments.
- L'Âge d'or (The
Golden Age, 1930) – A bishop is
thrown out a window, and in the final scene one of the culprits of
the 120 days of Sodom is portrayed by an actor dressed in
a way that he would be recognized as Jesus.
- Ensayo de un crimen
(The Criminal Life of Archibald de la Cruz, 1955) – A
man dreams of murdering his wife while she's praying in bed dressed
all in white.
- Simón del
desierto (Simon of the Desert, 1965) – The
devil tempts a saint by taking the form of a
bare-breasted girl singing and showing off her legs. At the end of
the film, the saint abandons his ascetic
life to hang out in a jazz club.
- Nazarin (1959) – The pious
lead character wreaks ruin through his attempts at charity.
- Viridiana (1961) – A
well-meaning young nun tries unsuccessfully to help the poor. Also there is a scene in the film as
The Last Supper (reminiscent of the Leonardo Da Vinci fresco).
- La Voie
Lactée (1969) – Two men travel the ancient pilgrimage road to Santiago de
Compostela
and meet embodiments of various heresies along the way. One dreams of anarchists shooting the Pope.
- El Gran Calavera
(1949); The final scenes of the wedding, the priest continuously
remind the bride of her obligations under marriage and then the
movie changes and the bride runs chasing her true love.
- El ángel
exterminador (1962); The final scene is of sheep entering
a church, mirroring the entrance of the parishioners.
The story of the making of
Viridiana is illustrative.
Buñuel's
earlier Spanish and French films
from the 1930s were regarded as cinema landmarks: Un Chien
Andalou, L'Âge d'or, and Las Hurdes
(also known as Tierra sin Pan or
Land Without Bread) (1933). The advent of the
Spanish Civil War in 1936, however, caused the
expatriation of many artists and intellectuals
from the fascist
dictatorship of
Franco, whose military revolt and rise to power had had the strong
backing of the Spanish Catholic hierarchy.
Had Buñuel stayed in Spain, his fate might have been the same as
that of his friend, poet
Federico García Lorca, who was
assassinated at the outset of Franco's military revolt. After some
years of artistic silence forced by the difficult circumstances of
his expatriation, Buñuel, then residing in Mexico, returned in full
force to writing and directing with some of his best films, which
once more won him international acclaim.
In 1960, for political
propaganda
reasons, Franco instructed his minister of culture to invite the
country's most famous filmmaker to return to Spain to direct a film
of his choice. Buñuel accepted and proceeded to make
Viridiana produced by Mexican film tycoon
Gustavo Alatriste and starring Mexican actress Silvia Pinal. He
left Spain as soon as he finished the film, but left a few official
copies. After viewing them, the copies were burned by the
dictator's authorities. The minister of culture was reprimanded for
having passed the
screenplay in the first
place.
A
copy of Viridiana, however, had been smuggled to France,
where it proceeded to win the Palme D'Or
at the Cannes International Film
Festival
. The film was banned in Spain, but got
international attention and praise (with some exceptions).
The
Vatican's official newspaper, l'Osservatore Romano
, published an article calling
Viridiana an insult not only to Catholicism, but to
Christianity itself.
Technique
Buñuel's style of directing was extremely economical. He shot films
in a few weeks, never deviating from his script and shooting in
order as much as possible to minimize editing time. He told actors
as little as possible, and limited his directions mostly to
physical movements ("move to the right", "walk down the hall and go
through that door", etc.). He often refused to answer actors'
questions and was known to simply turn off his hearing aid on the
set; though they found it difficult at the time, many actors who
worked with him acknowledged later that his approach made for fresh
and excellent performances.
Buñuel preferred scenes which could simply be pieced together
end-to-end in the editing room, resulting in long, mobile, wide
shots which followed the action of the scene. Examples are
especially present in his French films. For example, at the
restaurant / ski resort in
Belle de
jour, Séverin, Pierre, and Henri are conversing at a
table. Buñuel cuts away from their conversation to two young women
who walk down a few steps and proceed through the restaurant,
passing behind Séverin, Pierre, and Henri, at which point the
camera stops and the young women walk out of frame. Henri then
comments on the women and the conversation at the table progresses
from there.
Buñuel disliked
non-diegetic music, and
avoided it in his films, though traditional drums from Calanda
sound in most of his films. The films of his French era were not
scored and some (
Belle de jour,
Diary of a
Chambermaid) contain absolutely no music whatsoever.
Belle de Jour does, however, feature (potentially)
non-diegetic
sound effects, believed
by some to be clues as to whether or not the current scene is a
dream.
Pop culture references
In 2009, the
indie folk band
Califone recorded a biographical song about
Buñuel for their album
All My Friends Are Funeral
Singers.
Awards and nominations
Luis Buñuel was given the
Career Golden Lion in
1982 by the
Venice Film
Festival and the
FIPRESCI Prize - Honorable
Mention in 1969 by the
Berlin Film Festival.
Filmography
See also
References
- American Masters: George Cukor
Bibliography
- Bunuel Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)
- Buñuel biography
- Luis Buñuel, Mi Ultimo Suspiro (English translation
My Last Sigh Alfred A.
Knopf, 1983)
- Froylan Enciso, "En defensa del poeta Buñuel", en Andar
fronteras. El servicio diplomático de Octavio Paz en Francia
(1946-1951), Siglo XXI, 2008, pp. 130-134 y 353-357.
- Michael Koller "Un Chien Andalou", Senses of Cinema
January 2001 Retrieved on 26 July 2006.
- Ignacio Javier López, The Old Age of William Tell: A Study
of Buñuel's '"Tristana", MLN 116
(2001): 295–314.
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