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LUIS BUNUEL: A PARTIAL RETROSPECTIVE.

Intro and a bit of background.

Luis Bunuel (1900-1983) was one of the twentieth century's major filmmakers. He was born in Spain but also made films in Mexico and France. I have 13 of his films on DVD and there are others I can access via streaming services. There are twenty nine feature length films directed by Bunuel plus five shorts including the famous/infamous Un Chien Andalusia which he made with surrealist painter Salvador Dali. This will not however be a full retrospective as many of Bunuel's films are difficult to access, particularly the ones made in Mexico, but I hope to cover about twenty of them. In taking a look at Bunuel's oeuvre I am to some extent revisiting my younger days as Bunuel was one of the directors I studied when I did Film and Drama studies in the 70s at college in Reading. So on with the fun and let us begin with that provocative debut that is Un Chien Andalou.

UN CHIEN ANDALOU. Surrealism was a movement that covered the art world from painting to theatre to film and other arts in the early twentieth century. Among its aims was to 'resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super reality'. So said Andre Breton its leader. Bunuel met painter Salvador Dali at Madrid University around 1917 and they became friends. Bunuel also became interested in film especially after seeing Fritz Lang's Der Mude Tod so in 1928 he and Dali collaborated on a 15 minute short film together in the surrealist mode and this was Un Chien Andalou. Bunuel called the opening shot of a razor cutting into an eyeball a "call to arms" so he was out to provoke from the start. In it he takes swipes at the church, the bourgeoisie and the sexual desires of humanity. There are Freudian interpretations of the imagery of this film but whenever I watch it I prefer to just submit to its anarchic absurdity. It is one of the most audacious film debuts in cinema history.