Luis Buñuel

Second paper due in my Film History course
Original due date: November 4th, 2008
Pictures added for blogging purposes

Luis Buñuel's career as a filmmaker spanned several countries and five decades. Economically, he was a competent filmmaker producing films minimally, cheaply and efficiently. Bypassing technical inhibitions, he created simple films completely laden with social and political satire pushing the points of controversy and pioneering substance and metaphorical attributes to the art of cinema. Undoubtedly and deservedly, his influence among parallel and future filmmakers stretches as remote as his home country and as timeless as he was timely. Like many working in cinema, Luis Buñuel’s upbringing dictated to a large extent as to what his films would entail. A thorough understanding of his background is necessary to fully grasp the auteurist qualities that distinguish him among other auteurs of the time.

Luis Buñuel was born in Calanda, Spain in 1990 to a young mother aged only 18 years. His father was thirty years older than his mother; an interest addressed in several of his films. Buñuel grew up in a strict and disciplined Jesuit faith shedding his religion at the young age of 16 after repeatedly being reprimanded and removed from the establishment. He has been quoted saying “Thank God I’m an atheist” defending his affirmed life-long atheism. The institution of religion takes center stage, and sometimes not so evident, in several of his films. He also has a love of animals and nature which was briefly demonstrated in his early 20’s when he was a vegetarian.

As a young boy, it was immediately apparent Buñuel had a gift for thought and was successful academically. He studied at the University of Madrid starting in engineering to his father’s request, but soon realized he had a passion for the arts which led him to befriend other famous Spanish artists such as painter Salvador Dalí and poet Federico García Lorca. In a lifelong national struggle for placement, Buñuel first moved to Paris and, eventually, he and Dalí collaborated to create two surrealist films, Un Chien Andalou (1929) and L'Âge d'or (1930). The father of cinematic surrealism then entered the filmmaking world. A more detailed understanding of Buñuel’s life draws confirmation that his rebellious, radical lifestyle is evidence as a form of counterculture and subversion, heavily present in his works. “…he was always a heretic who resisted and he was also a powerful shifter whose meaning changed according to which particular hegemonic system he was trying to subvert” (Kinder, 3).

Viridiana (1961) was released in Buñuel’s native Spain with a good 30 years of filmmaking behind it. Having been long exiled in Spain, Generalissimo Francisco Franco invited Buñuel back to shoot Viridiana which was written and intended to be produced in Mexico entirely without supervision. Accepting the invitation, Buñuel returned to Spain and as noted by Robert G. Havard, “Shooting began…and, as is customary with Buñuel, progress was swift” (69). The quick production yielded a Cannes Film Festival release where it won the prestigious Palme d'Or but it went without controversy.

Viridiana was a sly, subtle attack at the institution of religion and received a ban in Spain for 16 years. Although heavily labeled as blasphemous, Buñuel fails to acknowledge that he intended this message saying “I didn’t deliberately set out to be blasphemous, but then Pope John XXIII is a better judge of such things than I am." The scenes like the dog behind the cart and the hidden knife in the crucifix were simply things he found in Spain.

The film itself moves along rather rapidly and employs jump cuts to highlight points of humor. Sayings like “everyone will have some work to do” are intercut with shocked and disgusted beggar’s faces. The beggars serve as a rambunctious ensemble insulting each other and resisting Viridiana’s guidance. The comical demeanor and opposition of the religious convention eventually end up in violence as demonstrated by the hidden blade in the crucifix. “The cross containing blades…suggests that the religious dogma which drives Viridiana’s ministry can easily become a dangerous weapon” (Higginbotham, 113).

Viridiana fears losing her Catholic values and decides to care for beggars in an effort to change the world around her despite her callous brother. "You can't save everyone," he tells her after purchasing an abused dog from an oblivious owner which is proceeded by another equally abused dog. With this, Buñuel states that an instinct to do good is inevitably in vain and calamity certainly overwhelms. In one notorious scene, the rampant beggars indulge in a feast accompanied by Handel's "Messiah" and parody Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” After destroying the dining hall, the beggars attempt to rape the hospitable Viridiana and, ultimately, a wager is needed to remedy the situation. This further emphasizes Buñuel’s belief in the futility and cynicism of the institution of religion by creating an absolute mess from an attempted good deed, even mocking a sacred event. “This film has been sufficiently dissected for there to be no further need to explain the evidence showing us that Buñuel is no longer anticlerical-he is an atheist …, he will mine the very foundations and not merely the secondary aspects of that most holy and bourgeois society that oppresses humankind” (Kyrou, 74).

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) has a minimal plot. Six affluent characters living in Paris are attempting to dine together several different nights, but each night’s dinner is interrupted in a bizarre way. “Partly because of the minimalism of the plot, our attention is drawn to the way the story is told, the narrative discourse, which is rich and complex” (Kinder, 12). The narrative takes on a precise structure to convey the plot to the viewer. The film can be broken into three distinct acts each of equal length and parallel to the other. Speech drowned out by urban noise like a cocaine discussion and why prisoners should be released from jail, omitted information like the officer’s train dream and why the woman hates Jesus and oedipal subplots like the Lieutenant’s patricide and the Bishop’s revenge are all analogous scenes. Instead of a single linear narrative, Buñuel uses this paradigm to organize the serial action of the characters and twist the creative innovations hidden deeper than the syntactical constructs.

In Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Buñuel’s bourgeois characters have an air of narcissism which is demonstrated with technicalities and the dialogue exchanges. In one scene, four of the six main characters are guests in the remaining two’s home. They are casually waiting for their friends to return and partake in informal drinking. A discussion of a proper martini mixture is brought up and Mr. Thévenot proceeds to pompously narrate his recipe and recite appropriate mannerisms while drinking. Mr. Thévenot concludes the conversation stating that Don Rafael knows that you must only sip a dry martini and, then, invites the chauffer in to offer a drink. All in one continuous shot, which is important for the immediacy, the chauffer enters the house, swiftly downs the martini and is invited back out just in time for Mr. Thévenot to begin his degradation. “That was precisely the way not to drink a dry martini,” said Mr. Thévenot directly. The rapid consumption is highlighted by zooming in on the chauffer and singling him out as the others began judgment. They continue on to say, “He’s a commoner. He’s uneducated.” They are placing themselves above others boosting their own egos and self-image. The characters are products of a capitalistic, bureaucratic society and strive to reach the top only to look down on those below themselves.

That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) was Buñuel’s final film and in it he was able to employ all that he did technically. Like most of Buñuel’s films, the camera was merely used to document the action and was never the focus of any shot. He let the actors move through the space and he precisely follows the movement always setting up perfectly balanced two shots varying in angle and zoom depending on the flow of the conversation. This is an effective technique in that it draws more emphasis to the actors, dialogue and ideas hidden in them. “Buñuel’s technical mastery of his medium has become so flawless in Desire that the most disordered arrangements of time and place cause not a ripple in the flow of ideas the director wishes to convey” (Higginbotham, 190).

Sexual desire and political violence are central to That Obscure Object of Desire. The film’s opening immediately demonstrates the imbalance of power between Mathieu and Conchita. Mathieu’s servant finds a bloodied pillow and wet panties in a disordered room and Mathieu, reluctant to respond, simply writes off the ‘clues’ executing his power in an incident he obviously had lost power, the rape of Conchita. Through the film, this sexual struggle shifts to and from Mathieu depicting a female opposition representative of two forms; there are two actresses that play the role. Conchita says she loves Mathieu and gives herself to him yet she restricts sexual relations as in one scene Mathieu strives to remove a chastity belt of sorts. Mathieu cannot accept this and struggles to control the relationship.

Similar to the battle of sexual power, shifting of political power also controls the film. One critic says, “The political and the sexual are not so far apart for Buñuel, as arenas for power and repression” (Russell). Several times in the film, terrorist groups attack, shifting power from the established government, firing guns, detonating explosions and generally wreaking havoc in residential and commercial areas. On a more personal level, power shifting is demonstrated when terrorists rob Mathieu and his chauffer of their car. Even in the end of the film, when the two begin a petty argument, an explosion interrupts and ends the narrative that sees no end. It is fitting that an enigmatic political dispute ends the film and, thus, Buñuel’s career.

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Havard, Robert G. “Luis Buñuel: Objects and Phantoms,” Luis Buñuel: A Symposium. Margaret A. Rees, ed. Leeds: Trinity and All Saints’ College, 1983: 59-88.

Higginbotham, Virginia. Luis Buñuel. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979.

Kinder, Marsha. “The Nomadic Discourse of Luis Buñuel: A Rambling Overview,” Luis Bunuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Marsha Kinder, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999: 1-27.

Kyrou, Ado. Luis Buñuel: An Introduction. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963.

Russell, Dominique. “Luis Buñuel,” Senses of Cinema. March 2005. . October 28, 2008.