The standard description of Luis Buñuel virtually starts and ends with the phrase "Spanish Surrealist" and while that label is true enough, it fails to capture the basics of an artist with an incredibly unpredictable and singular career. His most well-known films like Belle de Jour and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie were made late in life long after he had foresworn any ties to the Surrealists - Buñuel sees himself as being more or less finished with the movement about 3 decades before Belle de Jour. The late-French films don't meet the criteria for sanctioned Surrealist artworks and, on top if it, they were very French productions (in French, in French settings, primarily with French actors.)* By the of Belle du Jour, Buñuel had spent relatively little time in Spain for decades. There goes "Surrealist." There goes "Spanish." Making that typical label even more dubious is the fact that even the canonized works aren't from the most productive era of his career in term of the sheer output of films: the years in Mexico during which he directed 14 features. In terms of the relative balance of where he produced his work and the majority of style in evidence, Buñuel should be most accurately described as "the director of Mexican melodramas." And all this doesn't even touch on the time he spent in Hollywood. Or his tenure at MoMA in New York City. Or the period of international itinerancy that served as a prelude and transition to the era of canonized classics. But I guess the appellation "Spanish-born, French, Mexican, Spanish and American film-producing director of comedies, documentaries, melodramas and High Art classics" might be a touch unwieldy. Just a touch.

Buñuel is too unique and had too varied for a career for it to be summed up in a single, simple phrase. Even a quick rundown will gloss over big chunks of his ouvre. I'm even guilty of it now: in the previous paragraph I didn't mention his two authentically Surrealist films and a documentary generally accepted as being parcel to his Surrealist phase. Buñuel's early fame arose from those films, to boot: an experimental art-film short by which all others are measured, Un Chien Andalou; the disjointedly episodic L'Age D'Or; and the riotous deadpan document of poverty and misery, Las Hurdes. What makes Buñuel's career so hard to pin down is that the surfaces are deceiving. For instance, it would be natural to assume that the Surrealist films have a lot in common with the High Art masterpieces that bookended his career on the other side. After all, those two sets of films are his most overtly artistic. However, in terms of image composition, editing and rhythm the early Surrealist films and the late French classics couldn't have less in common. With Buñuel, even the basics are convoluted.

A good example: stylistically, his late-French classics actually closely resemble the Mexican entertainments which would seem to be most unrelated to the rest of his career. The late-French films are narratively, philosophically, emotionally and intellectually unhinged, but they are shot, acted and edited like "normal" films; the kind of "normal" films Buñuel produced in Mexico. Again in Mexico, the surfaces are deceiving: faithful adaptations of Robinson Crusoe and Wuthering Heights sound like standard commerical fair... but Buñuel emphasizes the madness and perversion already present in the material - he said he made Crusoe after he became obsessed with the idea of the titular character's sex life. His Mexican poverty row tales like El Bruto and Los Olvidados lean on the violence, grime, deseperation and misery built into their settings - Buñuel uses a typical setting for a commercial Mexican entertainment to present the same material he would when he had artistic carte blanche. Even moreso than the early French Surrealist films, the commercial Mexican films resemble the French High Art classics! This sort of refraction and reflection is present throughout his career: the Surrealism-tinged, Spanish documentary Las Hurdes mirrors the Mexican commercial melodrama Los Olvidados. And the fact-based Simon of the Desert recalls both the "irrational," dream-like Un Chien Andalou as well the fanciful late-French comedy The Milky Way. If I'm belaboring the themes of convolution, misunderstanding and reductiveness, it's only because Buñuel's amazingly varied work has been so repeatedly victimized by a critical mindset that sees him as "the Surrealist who disappeared for a couple decades and then made Belle du Jour."

Of course, not everything about his work is convoluted. Several elements remained consistent throughout his career; most importantly, his sense of humor. This is the trickiest component of Buñuel's personality as an artist to explain. On the one hand, it would seem obvious to describe his humor as "dry" and "black" - jokes revolve around executions, rape and the perversion of religious activity. However, the scenarios and punchlines aren't populist, gallows humor like, say, Hasek's The Good Soldier Schweik. The jokes frequently invoke the specifics of Catholic protocol, obscure Saints, Marxist theory, dream logic and the like, but "high-brow" and "cynical" wouldn't serve as apt descriptors either: his humor is too good-natured and accessible to ascribe to it the bitterness or elitism or rage or haughtiness lurking in those words. When a peasant's first action after being miraculously granted new hands by a Saint is to slap his son up side the head, it's a genuinely shocking and funny and true observation about the all too commonplace parts of the worst humanity has to offer, but Buñuel always makes sure the tone of the joke isn't grim or despairing. Buñuel finds humor in the inevitable selfishness, jealousy, violence and depravity of man, he isn't depressed, he's excited! His best sequences, such as the climatic home invasion of Viridiana,** harness the energy - the joy even - of humanity's basest impulses without taking the teeth out of the danger and violence that goes hand-in-hand. You could argue that his work is powered by a complete suspension of moral judgement, but he's simply too upbeat and naturally curious about human behavior to descend into blank nihilism. As much as his films are packed to the brims with all manner of suicide-inducing observations on our essential awfulness, Buñuel really seems to like all his characters and enjoy their company, even when they  are molesting student revolutionaries at gun-point or becoming sexually intrigued by child murderers.

And there's also a consistency in his interests: extreme poverty & privilege, disease, sex, violence, fantasy, Catholic legends & apocrypha, women's shoes and stockings. It's hard to think of a single one of his films that doesn't touch significantly on one of those subjects and most of his films touch on the majority of them. In this sense, it's really not hard to understand how he was able to work easily within Mexico's commerical film industry: most commerical films are little beyond fantasies of sex and violence, all Buñuel had to do was set them in aristocratic households or on poverty row and he was halfway there. In fact, the melodramatic form is conducive to Buñuel's natural tendency towards heightened emotions and characters driven to madness and violence by love and lust and money. Add in Mexico's heavily Catholic culture and the pieces are in totally place for a Buñuelian experience. It seems odd, but one of the most challenging, experimental filmmakers of all time really was at home in Mexico's commerical film industry. In spite of this, Buñuel's initial Mexican period remains his most under-appreciated run.  Just to clarify, there needs to be somewhat of a distinction made between these 14 commerical Mexican films made in 1946-1955 and the 5 "Mexican" films made during a period of international productions where he bounced from country to country. It's a career interestingly for it's twists and turns - it might be too much to say that the unpredictable life reflect the unpredictable films, but the unique route of Buñuel's career undoubtedly contributed to the unique tenor of his work.

Following the Cannes prize-winning Nazarin, the second of his "other" 5 Mexican films is technically Viridiana, but this is the biggest technicality imaginable: after the artistic success of Nazarin, Buñuel returned to Spain to make another more overtly artistic film. His exile from Spain had always been a mixture of self-imposed and forced: the political climate in the 1930's and 1940's had kept him away from Europe, but he probably could've returned much sooner than he did - he called Mexico his home even when working on French/Italian/Mexican co-productions in the late 50's. His return to his true homeland was predicated on the fact that Franco's censors had signed off of on Viridiana's production; Nazarin's success combined with a certain amount of political cooling-off, the atmosphere was now right more Buñuel to make "his" kind of film again and Spain was unexpectedly willing to host the production. However, the Vatican got word of Viridiana's Catholic-baiting ideas and imagery and demanded that Franco do something - he was all too happy to oblige and had all the prints destroyed except for one which was buried on a farm by the film's producers. In the meantime, Buñuel petitioned the Mexican government to have the film's nationality officially changed to "Mexican" and therefore not subject to Spanish censorship (and able to be distributed internationally and screen at film festivals, etc.) It was a process that took years and before it was resolved, Buñuel had made two more patently Buñuelian films in Mexico (Simon of the Desert, The Exterminating Angel) with Viridiana's producer, Gustavo Alatriste.

To recap, his career (roughly***) follows: his 3 early bona fide Surrealist films (1929-1933; Un Chien Andalou, L'Age D'Or, Las hurdes), his Mexican commerical phase (1946-1955; Los Olvidados, El, Robinson Crusoe), his "man without a country" era (1956-1965; Viridiana, Death in the Garden, The Diary of a Chambermaid), his High Art canonized masterpiece period (1967-1977; 7 films including Belle de Jour, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Tristana.) Interestingly, his commerical Mexican period is of equal size (and more significant output) to another other era,  but it remains his most over-looked. Even adventurous Buñuel fans probably know very little about Gran Casino or Mexican Bus Ride - the list of films from that era mainly includes works that have enjoyed very little critical championing or any kind of revival push. There's no Criterion Collection edition of Illusion Travels by Streetcar and no week run at Film Forum of a new print of The River and Death, even though both films are as worthy as The Milky Way or That Obscure Object of Desire. The reasons for the second-class status of the commerical Mexican films are too wide-ranging and debatable to go into for now, but I would argue that many films from that era are as good as anything he ever produced and that at very least it contains many, many under-appreciated gems. Which brings us to...

     (continued on PAGE 2)

* The exception in the "Onto the Canonized Classics" period is the Spanish-produced Tristana. That film still stars Catherina Deneuve, so even then there's a strong French element.

** I watch a lot of Telefutura's version of TMZ with my wife and we just saw a big special on Silvia Pinal (the star of Viridiana) and all her lovers and all the various kids she had with all these lovers. She's still a huge star in Latin America and most of her children are public personalities in the Frank Stallone/Paris Hilton mode of "only famous because of their family." They are also in the same mold because they are mostly "complete public embarrassments." Anyway, quite awesome, Pinal named one of her daughters, Viridiana and the special had to stop and talk about the movie for a bit to explain not only the name, but why it meant so much to Pinal. It was great: a Viridiana/Bunuel mini-primer jammed in the middle of a TMZ gossip show.

*** There are a couple loose ends here, like the 2 Spanish comedies he produced in the early 30's that aren't really Surrealist works. He made them after he came back from America but before he left for Mexico. Additionally, Las Hurdes was made around the same time those 2 films- so it was made in Spain after his official association with the Surrealists had ended, but it's hard not to think of it as one of his Surrealist works. Also, he was dividing his time between Spain and France, with a sizable side jaunt to Hollywood. He even made to films that he considered to be "America" (his quotes): The Young Ones & Robinson Crusoe. Confused? Check the timeline up top...

<<Previous Page    1    2   Next Page>>

home    about   contact us    featured writings    years in review    film productions

All rights reserved The Pink Smoke  © 2009