BUÑUEL

Luis Buñuel


"In a world as badly made as ours, there is only one road - rebellion" Buñuel, 


Another classic avant-garde filmmaker, and a crucial member of the early French movement was Luis Buñuel. His work moves from surrealist experimentation in the 1920s, to commercial comedies and melodramas in the 1950s to postmodernist cine d'art in the 60s and 70s. His nationality spans several countries, France, where he made his earliest and most celebrated films, Spain, where he was born and holds his cultural roots, and Mexico where he later became a citizen. 
Buñuel claimed that his project was to pierce the self-assurance of the powerful. He satirised his own class, to which he unashamedly belonged, a middle-class Catholic upbringing of which he understood the pettiness and neuroses evident. 


"I am still an atheist, thank God" Buñuel


He criticised religious hypocrisy, bourgeois complacency and patriarchal authority in his work, and they often themed male desire, in which women were mere projections of it. Desires, both sexual and political, were entwined throughout his films.


Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) 1928

This film was Buñuel and Salvador Dali's entry into the Parisian surrealist group. Allegedly, Buñuel went to the first screening with rocks in his pockets to 'respond to the audience'. But the film was received well, despite Buñuel expecting and hoping for an adverse reaction. He claimed that his next film would not have its sting be subverted by praise. 
The film's opening scene is still shocking today. The words 'Once upon a time' (in French) are displayed before we see Buñuel smoking a cigarette, sharpening the blade of his razor. He then exits onto a balcony, and watching a sliver of cloud cut the moon in half, prises open a woman's eye and cuts it across. This scene sets the viewing context for the whole film, reminding us that we must see with a different eye. 

Historically the film was a violent reaction against the avant-garde of the day, which was aimed at artistic sensibility and the audience's reaction. Buñuel and Dali set out to create a film with a myriad of different readings, hence rendering these analyses redundant. As Dali put it, the intention of the film was to "disrupt the mental anxiety of the spectator". In the film, as in dreams, there is a dislocation of time and space. The disruptions occur through the use of inter-titles, which appear to be key to the 'narrative', but in fact, are useless. After the opening sequence, we see the words "eight years later" (in French), for example. A street and beach occupy the same space outside the room, dislocating space. Interpretation is thus pointless, and psychoanalysis is useless, and to accept the film for what it is, is to let the images and emotions seduce, without seeking an explanation. 

Like Cocteau's Le Sang d'un Poète, Un Chien Andalou is an example of Buñuel's references to his upbringing, which is what makes it so relevant within his body of work. It was also his only silent film, which perhaps makes it stand out among his other works. 
The actual aim of the piece is entirely inspirational - the fact that a film can be made with no readings at all is experimental in itself and represents a fluidity of images that need not be interpreted, but can be merely enjoyed. This sort of experimentation interests me greatly and I would love to try some experiments of this nature. 


Information on Buñuel from Senses of Cinema

Information on Un Chien Andalou from Senses of Cinema