Buñuel was born in Calanda, Teruel, Aragón, Spain. He had a strict Jesuit education and went to university in Madrid. He was a very close friend of Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca, among other important Spanish artists that were living in the Residencia de Estudiantes. After that, he moved to Paris to do film-related work.
He married Jeanne Rucar in 1925. Buñuel became a Mexican citizen in 1948. His sons are film-maker Rafael Buñuel and Juan Luis Buñuel.
After working on several films as a director's assistant (Jean Epstein on Mauprat and Mario Nalpas on La Sirène des Tropiques) he co-wrote and then filmed a 24 minute short film Un Chien Andalou (1929) with Salvador Dalí. This film, featuring a series of startling and sometimes horrifying images ( such as the slow slicing of a woman's eyeball with a razor blade ) was enthusiastically received by French surrealists of the time and continues to be shown regularly in film societies to this day.
He continued using this surreal imagery that found fertile ground in Mexico. Famous are his scenes where chickens populate nightmares, women grow beards and aspiring saints are desired by luscious women.
Most of his later films were openly critical of middle class morals and organised religion, mocking their pretensions with often vicious and overt attacks on the Church and priests.
The opening scene of LuisBunuel's first film is a combination of two dreams, his own dream of a cloud slicing through the moon, and that of Salvador Dali involving a hand with ants crawling out of it.
It is as if Bunuel is saying that when society tries to civilize and control desires, that is precisely when they become excessive and "perverse." He uses the image of a toilet, an obvious symbol of excrement and dirt, (far from what is generally erotic) for shock value.
Bunuel is successful in his attempt to scandalize the dominant groups by humorously pointing out their repressive forces.
Luis Buñuel uses sardonic humor and surrealist imagery as instruments of social indictment in The Exterminating Angel.
The beauty of Luis Buñuel's masterful technical direction is his ability to create an atmosphere that is sensual and erotic without graphic nudity or explicit scenes.
Luis Buñuel creates an absurdly comic and wickedly incisive portrait of the meaningless social rituals and polite hypocrisy of the upper middle class in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.
Feeds |
Contact