Luis Buñuel

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Completed a year after his death in 1983, this program presents the definitive biography of Spain’s renowned Surrealist film maker and iconoclast, Luis Buñuel. Using photographs, film excerpts, and numerous interviews with Bunuel, the video chronicles his early friendships with Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca, the stormy reactions to many of his groundbreaking films, and the influence he has had on international cinema. Among those interviewed are directors Federico Fellini, John Huston, and Jose L. Saenz De Heredia; Buñuel’s wife, Jeanne Rucar, and son Juan; actor Francisco Rabal; and Octavio Paz.Read More »

Francisco is rich, strict on principles, and still a bachelor. He meets Gloria by accident, and is intent on marrying her and courts her until she agrees. Now he is a dedicated husband, but his passion starts to exhibit disturbing traits.Read More »

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The delirious journey of a mental disordered man, who is obsessed in making the perfect crime.Read More »

A group of juvenile delinquents live a violent and crime-filled life in the festering slums of Mexico City, and the morals of young Pedro are gradually corrupted and destroyed by the others.Read More »

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Although it is often described as a documentary, Land Without Bread is actually an early parody — some would say a Surrealist parody — of documentary filmmaking. The film focuses on the Las Hurdes region of Spain, the mountainous area around the town La Alberca, and the intense poverty of its occupants. Buñuel, who made the film after reading an ethnographic study (Las Jurdes: étude de géographie humaine (1927)) by Maurice Legendre, took a Surrealist approach to the notion of the anthropological expedition. The result was a travelogue in which a disinterested narrator provides unverifiable, gratuitous, and wildly exaggerated descriptions of the human misery of Las Hurdes.Read More »

Susana (Susana, demonio y carne or The Devil and the Flesh) is a 1951 film directed by Luis Buñuel. It is the story of a girl of questionable mental stability who escapes from incarceration and ends up at a plantation where she disrupts a working family’s daily routines and chemistry.Read More »

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After years in Mexican exile, Buñuel returned to his native Spain to make this dark account of corruption, which was immediately banned. A young nun, full of charity, kindness, and idealistic illusions about humanity, visits her uncle and tries to help some local peasants and beggars. But her altruism is greeted with ridicule and cruelty. Pinal gives a superb performance in the title role, and Buñuel’s clear-eyed wit is relentless in its depiction of human selfishness, ingratitude, and cynicism. The final beggars’ orgy – a black parody of the Last Supper, performed to the ethereal strains of Handel’s Messiah – is one of the director’s most memorably disturbing, funny, and brutal scenes. A masterpiece.
— Timeout.Read More »

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This wicked adaptation of the Octave Mirbeau novel is classic Luis Buñuel. Jeanne Moreau is Celestine, a beautiful Parisian domestic who, upon arrival at her new job at an estate in provincial 1930s France, entrenches herself in sexual hypocrisy and scandal with her philandering employer (Buñuel regular Michel Piccoli). Filmed in luxurious black-and-white Franscope, Diary of a Chambermaid is a raw-edged tangle of fetishism and murder—and a scathing look at the burgeoning French fascism of the era.Read More »

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The guests arrive at the Senechal home for a dinner party, only to discover that the invitation had been given for the following evening. This miscommunication proves to be the first in a series of unusual events that invariably prevent the Thevenots (Paul Frankeur and Delphine Seyrig), the Senechals (Jean-Pierre Cassel and Stephane Audran), Don Rafael (Fernando Rey), and Florence (Bulle Ogier) from enjoying a meal together. An alternate plan to dine at a local bistro is foiled when a funeral wake for the restaurant owner is held in an adjacent back room. Read More »