Luis Buñuel
- 1929Un Chien Andalou
- 1930L'Âge d'Or
- 1962The Exterminating Angel
Fed intoThe Exterminating Angel (opera)
His first film opens with a razor slicing an eye. He spent the next fifty years needling the church and the middle classes.
Buñuel was born in Calanda, in Aragon, and went to a Jesuit school in Zaragoza. At the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid he befriended Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca. In 1925 he moved to Paris and worked as an assistant to the director Jean Epstein.
He and Dalí wrote Un Chien Andalou in 1929, keeping no image that could be explained, and the Surrealists took him in. L'Âge d'Or followed in 1930. Right-wing protesters attacked the Paris cinema showing it, the police banned it, and it stayed out of public circulation for decades. Las Hurdes (1933) turned the travelogue on a poor corner of Spain.
After the Spanish Civil War he worked in the United States, then settled in Mexico in 1946. Los Olvidados won him best director at Cannes in 1951, and Viridiana won the Palme d'Or in 1961 before Spain banned it. His late French films, written with Jean-Claude Carrière, include Belle de Jour and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, which won the Oscar for best foreign language film. His memoir, My Last Sigh, came out in 1982.
Films
Where to start with Luis Buñuel, in the order they were made. Runtimes are approximate.
Un Chien Andalou
Written with Salvador Dalí. A razor slices an eye, ants pour from a hand, and a man drags two pianos loaded with dead donkeys across a room.
L'Âge d'Or
Two lovers keep being pulled apart by church, family and state. Right-wing protesters wrecked the Paris cinema showing it, and the police banned it within weeks.
Las Hurdes
A travel documentary about one of the poorest regions of Spain, narrated in a flat, polite voice over scenes of hunger and illness. The Spanish government banned it.
The Exterminating Angel
Made in Mexico. After a dinner party the guests find they can't leave the room, for no reason anyone can name, and stay trapped for days.
Echoed in
Where Buñuel's ideas turned up next.
The Exterminating AngelThe Exterminating Angel (opera)
Trapped at dinner, now in song
Thomas Adès turned Buñuel's film into an opera. It opened at the Salzburg Festival in 2016 and went on to Covent Garden and the Met.
Un Chien AndalouIsolar tour
The opening act was a razor
Every show on Bowie's 1976 Isolar tour began with a screening of Un Chien Andalou. He walked on stage as it ended.