In 1929, 29-year-old Spaniard Luis Buñuel (who decided to devote himself to the cinema after watching Fritz Lang’s silent masterpiece Destiny), shocked the world by cutting an eye with a razor blade in his directorial debut, An Andalusian Dog (Un Chien Andalou). Then, for nearly half a century, Buñuel directed more than 30 movies that pushed viewers out of their comfort zones and become one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.
From early idiosyncratic works to films that won the Palm d’Or (Viridiana), the Golden Lion (Belle de jour), and the Academy Award (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), here are the essentials of Buñuel’s career.
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7 An Andalusian Dog
Les Grands Films Classiques
Written by two provocateurs in their 20s, Buñuel and his friend, the artist Salvador Dalí, 1929’s silent short film An Andalusian Dog (Un Chien Andalou) is one of the greatest cinematic explorations of surrealism. Buñuel explained the 21-minute film’s origin, having written, “Dali said to me, ‘I dreamed last night of ants swarming around in my hands,’ and I said, ‘Good Lord, and I dreamed that I had sliced somebody or other’s eye.’ There’s the film, let’s go and make it.” An Andalusian Dog’s plot jumps from one surprising image to another, conceptualizing cinematic narrative as a dream.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
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Buñuel’s next film and his second collaboration with Dalí, the 1930 surrealist satire entitled L’Age d’Or (The Golden Age),e became an even bigger scandal, angered the audience with the incongruous shot of a cow on a bed and the blasphemous final scene with Jesus Christ. Laughing at conformity, the church, and the bourgeoisie, L’Age d’Or introduces ideas that would come to define Buñuel’s films.
6 The Young and the Damned (Los Olvidados)
Ultramar Films
Despite Buñuel’s notoriety with An Andalusian Dog and The Golden Age, it took him 20 years to regain notice. In 1950, the director gained attention with a teen crime film that depicts poor children fighting for survival in Mexico’s slums. For Los Olvidados (The Forgotten Ones), released in the United States as The Young and the Damned, Buñuel won the Best Director Award at the 4th Cannes Film Festival. Primarily done in the tradition of Italian neorealism, this powerful and provoking portrait of troubled youth has been cited as an influence on 2002’s crime film City of God.
5 Viridiana
Films Sans Frontières
Denounced by the Vatican and censored by the Spanish government due to its sacrilege, animal cruelty, scenes of a sexual nature, necrophilia, and rape, the 1961 Viridiana is regarded by many as Buñuel’s masterpiece. Dealing with the theme of spoiled idealism, the film follows an innocent young novice Viridiana (played by the director’s frequent muse Silvia Pinal), who visits her lecherous uncle Don Jaime (played by Fernando Rey). The audacious Viridiana won the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and became the director’s most blasphemous film.
4 The Exterminating Angel
Altura
Buñuel’s claustrophobic horror story, the 1962 surrealist film The Exterminating Angel centers on a group of high-society guests who find themselves unable to leave the sumptuous dinner party. After a few days, everything descends into anarchy, and guests begin to live like animals. An acerbic take on the hypocrisy of the social elite, it is another provocative and unforgettable Buñuel’s satire that serves as a model for his later works, including the 1972 Oscar-winning film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.
3 The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
20th Century Fox
The 1972 surrealist film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is Buñuel’s greatest hit, thanks to winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Like many of the director’s other works, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie attacks the pointless existence of the ruling class. Featuring Buñuel’s favorite, Fernando Rey, the film follows a group of wealthy friends whose efforts to dine together are continually interrupted by events both actual and imagined, including gunfire, death, and the intervention of a ghost. Surprising, radical, and masterful, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is a must-see.
Buñuel intended this surrealist satire as his last film that recapitulates important ideas the director had frequently returned to – but later released two more comedies, The Phantom of Liberty and That Obscure Object of Desire, forming a loose trilogy of surreal anti-bourgeois masterpieces despite nearing his 80s.
2 That Obscure Object of Desire
InCine
Buñuel’s final filmmaking project, the 1977 comedy-drama That Obscure Object of Desire stars Fernando Rey as rich widower Mathieu, who falls desperately in love with an unattainable 19-year-old flamenco dancer named Conchita (played by two actresses, Carole Bouquet and Ángela Molina).
A dark web of desire set against a background of a terrorist insurgency in Spain and France, this film was described by The New York Times as “an upside-down romance in which love, Buñuel seems to be telling us, is a devastating act of subversion.” It is a perfect swansong.
1 Belle de Jour
Valoria
The director’s erotic masterpiece, the 1967 drama Belle de Jour (a play on words that translates from French as “the beauty of the night,” a prostitute) features the most iconic Catherine Deneuve performance as Séverine, a young doctor’s wife who works in a high-class brothel to fulfill her sadomasochistic fantasizes. Memory, fantasy, and reality blend in this provocative and elegant examination of female desire, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and became Buñuel’s biggest commercial hit.
