The Discreet Charm of Luis Bunuel

I haven't seen any of these besides Un Chien Andalou, and that was in school abt five years ago. What do I get from netflix?

Short Answer: Whatever you can get from 'em.

I was lucky that my university videotape library had most of the Mexican films in awful prints. All the major ones are available (not to sure about El though).

his autobiography >>>> most of his films

Longer Answer: Viridiana, and that run from Belle onwards.

(x-post)

Simon

My vote's for Los Olvidados, followed by ...Bourgeoisie and Belle De Jour, but will agree that, these exceptions aside, even his good films have dead patches.

Simon

I almost voted for El but went for Phantom

any of these four are good to start with, and the less you know about them going in, the better.

The Exterminating Angel (1962)
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
The Phantom of Liberty (1974)
That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)

after that... everything else, Los Olvidados & El are my two favorites from the Mexico City years 1947-1960. and the autobiography is for anyone.

xpost I don't find his best films to have any dead patches, you just need to rescreen them

I have! I watched Viridiana and ...Chambermaid this weekend. The latter's actually a lot better than I remember it, but the first half of Viridiana -- the Fernando Rey section -- drags. Pauline Kael OTM: Bunuel doesn't even dignify her inclination to do good (Nazarin a much better film on this same theme, actually), so Viridiana's primness makes the pace rather leaden.

his Mexican soapers Susana and Wuthering Heights are great fun.

Yup.

Dug up Orson Welles' remarks on Bunuel preserved in the Bogdanovich book. He's totally OTM:

He's a rich feeding ground for that sort of critic, because it's all true about him. You can take off and say he likes feet and all that. Jesus, it's all true. He's that kind of intellectual, and that kind of Catholic. He is a deeply Christian man who hates God as only a Christian can, and, of course, he's very Spanish. I see him as the most supremely religious director in the history of the movies. A superb kind of person he must be. Everyone loves him.

unlike many of his others, Viridiana improves if you read up on the back story before actually seeing the film. the insults are very deeply encoded, the film isn't worried about its pacing it's just content to exist as a prolonged blasphemy, and the final supper is an outrage. and it worked, there's a reason almost every copy of the film in the world was confiscated and destroyed

http://www.kevinkee.com/2007/09/27/viridiana-bunuels-masterpiece-nearly-destroyed/

(xpost)
The funny thing is, if you read that book of interviews with the two Mexican critics, Objects of Desire, he denies everything! Which used to make me not like the book, but now I realize that, of course, that is what he would say.

But the back stories of most of his films is fascinating. Read Objects of Desire, his booklength conversations with two sympathetic Mexican critics, which is almost as great as My Last Sigh. Out of print, alas, but available in most libraries.

ha! xpost

The Exterminating Angel for me.

Chunks of the Objects... book have been reprinted in Criterion's booklets for most of his films they've put out. Discreet Charm is an exception.

I need to see more of his stuff. Loved Discreet Charm but the others I've seen, Chambermaid and the two after Discreet, were disappointing in comparison.

I don't like the post-Discreet films much either; That Obscure Object of Desire reeeeally drags.

I subscribe to the new reasonably well-populated school of thought that the Mexican films are pretty much the best ones. One time I had a brief discussion with the guy who runs Cinema Tropical and he said something like "Those films really feel like they are from the gut."

I am not as up on the Mexican films as I should be, but I just don't think anything can touch The Discreet Charm, it's got everything.

More than anything by Sam Fuller, those Mexican Bunuel films make an airtight case for the virtues of the B-movie ethos as practised by an artist. Take Mexican Bus Ride, Susana, or Wuthering Heights. The acting is at best listless, the production values a little better than fifth graders using construction paper and papier mache, but man! He was never more authentically subversive and hence surrealist.

OTM. Now I'm thinking I should have voted for Illusion Travels By Streetcar, if only for the little Genesis play-within-the-movie featuring an Eve dressed in a Stone Age leopard-skin fur bikini and a sombrero-wearing Adam with a pistol in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other.

I don't really buy that, but it's nice to consider anyway.

In other words, Mexican Bus Ride is OK and all, but it's no L'Age d'Or.

gotta go with exterminating angel. what a movie.

I just voted for Las Hurdes, or what is called in English Land Without Bread. Watched it earlier last week for a class and it stuck with me and I figure it will be under-represented. It's actually available on google video for those who haven't seen it.

Simon is a personal favourite but L’Âge d'or has a fantastic sense of rhythm, Max Fucking Ernst and Jesus as the Duc de Blangis so what the hell I gotta give it the vote.

Simon isn't even out on DVD, right?

Doesn't look like it. I don't know if this is because it's a (semi-) short or what. Most of the Region 2 Bunuels are cheapy compilations tho.

Haven't seen many of the Mexican films.

Don't like "That Obscure Object of Desire" much.

Watched "Diary of a Chambermaid" recently - it's an odd film, something quite creepy and unsettling about it.

Also saw "The Milky Way" recently... totally incomprehensible!

I'm going for "Exterminating Angel".

So you've seen at least one Mexican film, then.

ian, start with L’Âge d'or and Los Olvidados, then whatever. My other favorites are The Exterminating Angel, Diary of a Chambermaid, Tristana and Discreet Charm.

Only the famous ones! (xp)

I think Tristana was Hitchcock's favorite. There is a story in My Last Sigh about Hitch sitting next to Buñuel at some Directors Guild function and saying "I loved that bit about the leg" then getter drunker and drunker as the evening progressed and repeating "That leg! That leg!"

That picture of every Old Hollywood director meeting at Cukor's house in Buñuel's honor is really, really odd – who'd have thought that Rouben Mamoulian and George Stevens were fans?

Certainly John Ford was to be expected, but some of those others...

Was Lewis Milestone there?

Was Ford even there? I seem to remember seeing his eyepatch

He and Fritz Lang couldn't make it. Apparently Don Luis was quite nervous about meeting Lang, even asking for an autograph.

That thing he wrote about Metropolis that's in An Unspeakable Betrayal is pretty great.

I always thought those old directors were kind of celebrating themselves and using Don Luis as a pretext. Well, not a pretext exactly, but..

Any excuse for a booze up

Exactly

Ford came to luncheon at George Cukor's house that Bunuel wrote about in MLS. He mentioned that the event was notable because it was the last time any of them saw Ford alive.

He passed away shortly afterward, his last moments spent cradled in Peter Bogdanovich's arms.

Then again, it's conceivable that the directors of The Greatest Story Ever Told and Ben-Hur loved Viridiana and The Milky Way.

it seems resonant with our world now

Yes, do it.

Death in the Garden (1956)

This is on the bfi player. Anyone seen it?

S'okay.

Yeah, no great shakes

Thanks won't bother, for now. Couple more things I want to check first.

watched 'It's Called the Dawn'. it's slow but I liked it! power to the people. Buñuel giving longtime fans a shoutout with the Jesus streetlamp oriface portrait & the baby turtle. cool to see Julien Bertheau playing the exact same chief of police he plays 20 years later in 'Phantom' and 'Discreet Charm', and cool to see Lucia Bosè (I am a huge fan of her 1981 record with Gregorio Paniagua 'lo Pomodoro' - Atrium Musicae de Madrid / Gregorio Paniagua )

probably best saved after you've worked through the 60s-70s films. safe introduction into the 50's films is still 'El'. but this was a treat if you've already enjoyed 'Strange Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz' & 'Mexican Bus Ride'.

that Jesus photo was real btw, not his creation

I just knew!

thanks for posting

Death in the Garden has so many bizarrely ordinary colonial/jungle trek passages. Was he trying to get a hit? A few weirdnesses here and there, sure, like the snake / ants shot, and the brutal dispatch of most of the cast at the end.

it definitely tops his other films for use of guns and ammo

Pierre Clémenti's is the greatest metal-toothed character in cinema, sorry Richard Kiel and James Franco.

Morbz otm.

Madame Anais one of the better acted and written supporting characters in the Bunuel universe.

Alfred otm.

Like when she doesn't allow Severine to kiss her.

Yes, it's a great performance, very subtle.

in Belle du Jour I could relate to Séverine’s difficulty connecting sex with love - sex could only be about fantasy for her, and her love for her husband was something she could only really understand through fantasy

DIG THAT WES ANDERSON FONT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gENBxJl5bDs

I watched a few of the films he made in Mexico last year. Quite enjoyed Illusion Travels By Streetcar though it seems more like a low key Ealing Comedy or Disney thing than what he's best known for.

That's a good one. Fair enough, but I like that side of his work too.

I watched Discreet Charm way earlier in life than would be advisable and it made perfect sense to me alongside the Monty Python movies.

ITBS and most of his Mexican productions were all chock full o’ that Surrealist spirit, IMHO. Isn’t there a scene where meat’s being sold on a tramcar? That comes to mind.

Like I said upthread, the $13 budgets of those Mexican films make many of them scarier and more effective.

Yes, exactly.

I can't wait to be in the grips of a major passion.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 7 December 2017 16:15 (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

what you and Major Passion do isn't even the Army's business

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 7 December 2017 16:17 (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

On tonight:

https://princecharlescinema.com/PrinceCharlesCinema.dll/WhatsOn?f=25443525

One of the more idiosyncratic Bunuel rankings I've seen. Mexican Bus Ride at #1!

https://letterboxd.com/diogoserafim/list/luis-bunuel/

That's a fantastic ranking. El (which is my current fave) told me that I really need to see the Mexican years.

A lot of the French stuff is dull (ofc watch it but).

Really wish I was on a good torrents site rn. That's what I'd be downloading.

Excellent!

Diary of a Chambermaid, The Phantom of Liberty, and The Milky Way don't do much for me either.

I'll have to give Subida another shot, since I haven't seen it since college and it was easily the one that impressed me the least

The Mexican films are really good. Still a couple I haven't seen.

One of the more idiosyncratic Bunuel rankings I've seen. Mexican Bus Ride at #1!

I loved that one particularly.

I gave The Milky Way my first viewing in years. Amusing for about 20 minutes in a Catholic boy having a laff sort of way. Those French films were as uneven as the Mexican ones.

Right. And so the Mexican films are more of a gift in that we might not have expected as much, lower budgets, less star power etc.

My French 2 class seems to have ended up doing a film unit that I didn't really plan on. We have a 100-minute block on Monday. Should I show them The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie?

Sure, why not?

yes

Happy birthday, cabron!

Was somewhat surprised how enjoyable Susana was, after catching a screening at MoMA. Buñuel himself seemed to underrate it, going by stray comments of his.

I dont think he was capable of making a non good film. There's only 5 I haven't seen.

lol i was gonna say more or less that, tho maybe i'd say non-enjoyable rather than non-good

I don't think he was capable of mixing a bad martini.

Thanks to that MoMA retrospective, I've now seen most of his films, and I'm inclined to agree, it's likely he's never made a bad film. Certainly some are better than others - as mentioned in the retrospective's notes, several of those films were very much commercial films with little room to do anything more - but they all have something to like and most have some measure of greatness to them. It's a testament to Bunuel that he made the best of where life took him to an extraordinary degree, going to Mexico to work as a "commercial" filmmaker when MoMA rescinded their job offer, then over the course of a decade building that into a launching pad for a third act as a European arthouse giant.

FWIW, among the Mexican films including Viridiana, which had its state of origin reclassified as Mexico, I'd say he made at least ten genuine masterpieces. Pretty remarkable considering how much his reputation probably rests on his earlier and later films simply because the availability of his Mexican films hasn't been reliable, especially in decent print quality. Hopefully that changes soon - many of those titles had great-looking and very recent restorations.

At worst Don Luis' lesser films suffer from a malnourished idea or a poor execution of a promising idea, neither of which fatal flaws for a director.

I really need to see Subida al cielo again. My memory is not that of a masterpiece, but I've seen so many suggest otherwise

LOL, not surprised I said basically the same itt already

I really liked this one. Wish I could get a physical version of it to watch.
https://letterboxd.com/film/illusion-travels-by-streetcar/

Was the MoMA Mexican series mentioned yet?

Yes, I see that it was, more than once

Just finished. I had some vague intention to get over there but somehow something suddenly came up.