Luis Buñuel: An American Cinematheque Retrospective

With the 1929 short “Un Chien Andalou,” Luis Buñuel dove headfirst into Surrealism, establishing his unrivaled talent for bringing dreams and nightmares to the screen. Fleeing his country’s civil war, he eventually settled in Mexico but would frequently return to Europe to make one boundary-blowing film after another in a career that spanned nearly half a century. And though he continued to refine his craft during that time, he never mellowed with age – the director’s later work remains as iconoclastic as “Andalou.”

Fetish, religion, bourgeois society and moral degradation occupy Buñuel’s cinema like slyly winking serpents. Whether the dinner guests are rich (THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL) or poor (VIRIDIANA), the Spanish filmmaker roasts them with equal relish. He turns the ideal of a movie heroine on its head with Jeanne Moreau’s character in DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID and Catherine Deneuve’s in BELLE DE JOUR. And Buñuel’s razor-sharp class commentary and deliciously entertaining treatment of taboos are matched with an anarchic approach to narrative in such non-linear triumphs as THE MILKY WAY, THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY and Oscar winner THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE.