Luis Bunuel
Luis Bunuel
RANKED:
15. Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)
Because the French New Wave movement afforded many artists the freedom of artistic experimentation, Bunuel would spend the rest of his career there starting in 1964. However, his first film of this period was perhaps his most straightforward and un-experimental film of his career. "Diary of a Chambermaid" tackles the same anti-bourgeois subjects in most of his work, yet it does so without surrealist elements or plot experimentation. It stars famed French actress Jeanne Moreau as a chambermaid who must navigate the corruption, perversion, and violence of a wealthy estate family. Despite being his most tempered film of Bunuel's final French period, it still remains a classic of French cinema.
14. Simon of the Desert (1965)
Inspired by ascetic 5th-century Syrian saint Simeon Stylites, Luis Bunuel's final Mexican film "Simon of the Desert" tells the story of Simon, who stays on top of a large pillar in the desert for over 8 years. Only 45 minutes in length, the short film explores Simon's anecdotal isolation atop the pillar, while the devil temps him below. Bunuel elevates Simon high above everyone, where he engrains himself in his own delusions of grandeur. Bunuel uses his typical surrealist flourishes to construct Simon's psychological Christ-like complex.
13. El (1953)
The premise of Luis Bunuel's 1953 Mexican melodrama "El" is relatively simple: a young woman, after her marriage to a wealthy man, begins to learn just how paranoid and erratic he is. Throughout the first several months of their marriage, his actions begin to grow increasingly unstable and her continued efforts to alert others only gets blown back in her face. This absurdist melodrama demonstrates the psychological abuse our female protagonist goes through when shacking up with the wrong man.
12. The Milky Way (1969)
It wasn't uncommon for Luis Bunuel to examine religion, Catholicism, and ideology in his work. His 1969 film "The Milky Way" takes these examinations to their fullest reach. The film follows two French beggars en route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Along the way, they run into various heretics and religious fanatics from various timelines. The interpretations of religious text and the understanding of the Christian faith seem to vary dramatically between all characters, pointing to the absurdity of holding tightly to a specific dogma, as you can never relegate your understanding to any sort of coherent and unanimously agreed-upon truth. The film is a surrealist journey through the various disparate notions of God, Jesus, and religion.
11. That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)
With his final bow, Luis Bunuel leaves us with an obscure, mysterious, and tantalizing final piece, 1977's "That Obscure Object of Desire." When a wealthy Frenchman becomes obsessed with an impoverished Spanish flamenco dancer, they begin a confusing and undeterminable relationship. All the while, it seems as though this young woman is only using this man for his material wealth, as she continues time and time again to withhold sex from him. Even still, he persists. Even still, she persists as well. Their relationship becomes a convoluted mess of desire, political allegory, frustration, violence, and everything else under the sun. Bunuel's final note on his film career is a puzzling array of questions about the nature of our inner selves and that weird and uncontrollable urge that exists within us all.
10. Tristana (1970)
Adapted from the 1892 Benito Perez Galdos' novel of the same name, Luis Bunuel's 1970 film "Tristana" depicts the shameless mutilation of the innocence of a young teenage girl by the vile and hypocritical Don Lupe, her ward. A discomforting watch, the film is dark and brutal. Bunuel scraped away the more melodramatic tone of the original novel for something more his speed. Bunuel was often known for making dark and bleak pictures of humanity. However, "Tristana" seems to be his most blunt depiction of humanity's craven wickedness.
9. Nazarin (1959)
Although it is based on a novel, Luis Bunuel's 1959 Mexican film "Nazarin" mirrors the story of Jesus Christ. A humble, charitable priest lives a virtuous life according to the word of God. He gives charitably, has compassion for those around him, and forgives everyone of their trespasses. For this, he is executed. But why? Well his undenying virtuous behavior shines a light on the hypocrisy of the church, the government, and humanity as a whole.
8. L'Age d'Or (1930)
Luis Bunuel's follow up to his masterpiece first film, "Un Chien Andalou," held the same conventions as its predecessor. 1930's "L'Age d'Or" took the same surrealist approach to storytelling and stretched it into an hour-long feature film. The film centers on a man and woman who continuously try to engage in sexual acts but are continuously interrupted by various happenings. These interruptions typically stemmed from oppressive bourgeois and Catholic 'values.' "L'Age d'Or" was a big middle finger to the upper-class values of its time, and demonstrated how the mores of these social and religious sects not only temper down our basic human impulses, but breed violence in the relations between people. The film was so offensive to these sects that it was banned for over forty years.
7. The Exterminating Angel (1962)
After Luis Bunuel's 1961 Spanish film "Viridiana" was banned in Spain, Bunuel returned to Mexico to artistically annihilate the ruling Spanish bourgeoise class. In the film, wealthy dinner guests discover that they are unable to leave a dinner party. After days of being unable to leave, they descend into "Lord of the Flies"-type chaos. With "The Exterminating Angel," Bunuel turns these haute bourgeoise and demonstrates the fallibility of their etiquette, pretensions, and superiority complex. Famed film critic Roger Ebert, in his examination of the film, believes that the characters are representations of the Spanish ruling class in Francisco Franco's Spain, unable to leave their feast after the defeat of the workers in the Spanish Civil War. Regardless of WHO these characters represent, its clear that their bourgeois pretensions come crashing down to reveal a group of classless animals.
6. The Phantom of Liberty (1974)
Despite being the penultimate film of Luis Bunuel's career, 1974's "The Phantom of Liberty" feels like the true summation of his work. The film contains a series of episodes, linked only by a character moving from one scenario to the next. The episodes contain surreal or far-fetched incidents, all demonstrating the instability of social order due to disparate quirks and desires of the individual. The film's title seems to suggest that we believe ourselves to live in a 'free society,' but have not reconciled the notion that a free society would be utter animalistic chaos. Because of this, social norms and collective morality have been installed to establish a sense of order. "The Phantom of Liberty" seems like a final note from the master, summarizing his career-long themes of individual impulses and how they directly conflict with social and religious morality.
5. Un Chien Andalou (1929)
Considered one of the most important films ever made, "Un Chien Andalou" finds Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali uniting to create one of first pieces of surrealist cinema. By eliminating logical associations, they were able to construct a series of scenes and images that were purely untethered to convention, logic, and rationality. This allows for the viewer to freely associate based on their own subconscious interpretation. Meant to be a shock and insult to the 'intellectual bourgeoisie' at the time, these audiences found the film groundbreaking nonetheless. On the other hand, general audiences wanted the film banned and even sent death threats to Bunuel. Despite this, the film was never banned and is now considered the seminal work in the genre of surrealist cinema.
4. Los Olvidados (1950)
After spending 20 years on hiatus from making feature-length films, Luis Bunuel became the most important Spanish-speaking filmmaker in the world with his artistic triumph, "Los Olvidados." Taking place in an impoverished neighborhood in Mexico City, the film centers on a group of teens who terrorize everyone. Bunuel does not romanticize any of the characters, including the victims of this teen gang, whom are usually just as wicked and vile as the urchins themselves. With this, Bunuel demonstrates a dog-eat-dog reality of the impoverished community. He does so using inspiration from the Italian Neo-Realist movement: using outdoor locations, nonprofessional actors, low budget production, and a focus on the lower classes. However, unlike a neo-realist film, Bunuel injects his typical surrealism, heightening this story to something more poetic.
3. Belle de Jour (1967)
Typically, Bunuel uses film to criticize the wealthy elite and the church. With his 1967 masterpiece, "Belle de Jour," he took his aim at the middle-class. Starring Catherine Deneuve, the film centers on a bored housewife who spends her days as a prostitute while her husband is at work. As with most of his work, Bunuel injects plenty of surrealist elements into the film, making it difficult to decipher what exactly is really happening and what is in our protagonist's subconscious. Either way, it is evident that Bunuel is iterating the restless boredom of the middle-class and their inherent desire for punishment and debasement. These internal, natural human desires seem to go against the pretensions and buttoned-up nature of this class, thereby illustrating the hypocrisy of not only this economic structure, but all conceived social structures in general. "Belle de Jour" came out during a French film renaissance and stands as one of its major achievements.
2. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
Largely considered the most "Bunuel" film of Luis Bunuel's career, "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" finds a group of bourgeois dinner guests continuously trying to seat for a dinner that never arrives. Starting out with getting the date for the evening dinner wrong, the reasons for not getting to eat grow increasingly absurd as the film progresses, eventually ending on a group of terrorists breaking in and executing them all. The film is a confounding experience, as it progressively becomes clear that what we are seeing may or may not be a dream. Even more so, it may be a dream within a dream within a dream. This notion becomes moot, as the primary crux of the film centers on these bourgeois characters and their repeated frustrations over not receiving what they expected, desire, or feel they are owed. In the same way, the rug is continuously pulled out from under the viewer, as our expectations are constantly made null. Bunuel uses "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" to continuously frustrate his bourgeois characters and, as a way to compare our mutual fallacies, us in the process.
1. Viridiana (1961)
In his career, Luis Bunuel made many audacious pictures. However, the film he made on his return to his home country of Spain, "Viridiana" would be his most audacious yet. Its audacious attitude is for no other reason than its complex and paradoxical depiction of humanity. A nun is a whore, a crucifix is a weapon, deplorables are holy, and a spoiled rich man is also empathetic. Make no mistake, many of these ideas seem to involve Catholicism, as Bunuel consecrates the film with imagery like a crown of thorns being thrown into a fire and a beggars' banquet being made to look like the last supper. Whether it's that very banquet descending into a drunken orgy of sex and destruction or the titular Viridiana's selfless acts of charity being thrown back in her face, "Viridiana" plays with our expectations of humanity. Like many of Bunuel's films, his characters always seem to digress down to their natural base instincts - animalistic, selfish, and amoral.
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