Luis Bunuel

Born in Calanda (Teruel) on February 22, 1900, Luis Buñuel Portolés was the first of the seven children of Leonardo Buñuel, an Indian who had become rich in Cuba, and his wife, María Portolés, a woman younger than him. Soon the family moved to Zaragoza, where Luis spent his entire childhood. There he studied first at the Colegio del Sagrado Corazón, and later in El Salvador, a Jesuit institution, where he received a deep religious instruction, although he later became obsessed with the subject, his films offer contradictory visions of religion, and he became his famous phrase “I am an atheist, thank God”. When he was a boy, the movie theater was still a sideshow attraction, and he saw his first movie, a hand-colored cartoon, in a tarp-covered shack.

When he turned 17, Buñuel decided to study Agricultural Engineering in Madrid, where he lived in the famous Residencia de Estudiantes, along with Salvador Dalí , Federico García Lorca , Rafael Alberti and Pepín Bello, with whom he became very close friends. With them he staged delirious plays, spent many nights partying, and participated in social gatherings and in the residence’s film club. Soon, Buñuel discovered his artistic vocation and after an attempt to study Entomology, he ended up enrolling in Philosophy and Letters, branch of History. When he graduated he went to Paris, where he saw a lot of movies, an average of three movies a day. Influenced by André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto, he writes stories and poems, but ends up deciding on cinema after discovering The Three Lights, by Fritz Lang , which impressed him. Convinced that directing was his true vocation, he goes to see director Jean Epstein , and offers to work for free in exchange for learning the trade. He this one takes him as an assistant director inMauprat and La chute de la maison Usher (The Fall of the House of Usher) .

Buñuel’s mother lends him 25,000 pesetas to shoot the surrealist with Salvador DalíAn Andalusian dog , 17 minutes. It is made up of surreal but shocking images, such as the cyclist who hits his head against the edge of the sidewalk, and above all, the woman’s eye cut by a razor. Premiered in a movie club, it is applauded by French critics as the best translation of the surrealist movement to the screen.

A patron, the Vicomte de Noailles, financed his second work,The Golden Age , whose central theme is the commitment to love over social barriers. Deliberately provocative, the cinema where it was shown was attacked by extremist groups, and the French authorities ended up banning it for years.

At that time, Irving Thalberg, the boss of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, offers him a contract, but shortly after arriving, he sends him a messenger to go to a screening of a film starring his ‘darling’, a certain Lili Damita . “I told him that he didn’t have time to waste to go and listen to a whore,” Buñuel comments in an interview with Jacques Doniol-Valcroze . That’s where Buñuel’s relationship with MGM ended, because they put him on the street. “They paid me for the return trip and a month instead of two.”

Eager to shoot a film about the most deprived areas of Spain, he gets a friend, a certain Acin, to promise that he will pay for the film if he wins the lottery. Curiously, three months later he touched him, and ended up giving him 20,000 pesetas, with which the filming ofLas Hurdes, land without bread , a documentary about the region of Extremadura. Finally, it was banned by the government of the Second Republic, because it considered that the image it gave was denigrating for Spain.

In 1934, Buñuel married the Olympic champion in artistic gymnastics, Jeanne Rucar, in Paris. It was a civil wedding, without the assistance of family members, and he had to resort to three impromptu witnesses, including an unknown man who was passing by on the street, who was asked for a favor. The couple had two children, Juan Luis and Rafael. Much could be written about the relationship of the Aragonese with his wife. The supposed rebel and defender of free love, who apologized for brothels and orgies, was never unfaithful to Jeanne. He stayed by her side always hers, and in fact she accompanied him on her deathbed. And he was a deeply jealous man who would not tolerate one more glance towards his wife…

With money from his family, Buñuel founded the Filmófono production company in 1935, with which he produced films such asDon Quintin the bitter andJuan Simón’s daughter , which was very successful in theaters.

Civil war breaks out. While his friend Dalí sympathized with the nationalists, and Lorca was shot, Buñuel supported the Republicans in Madrid. Despite everything, he helped his Francoist friends when they were about to lose their lives, and for example, his intervention was decisive when it came to saving the director José Luis Sáenz de Heredia (Historias de la radio ), whose cousin (pun intended) was José Antonio Primo de Rivera, and whom he knew well because he had worked at Filmófono.

In 1936 he left Madrid and moved to Geneva and then to Paris. After the war he spent a season working in Hollywood for Warner, as head of dubbing Spanish versions for Latin America. He traveled to Mexico when a producer offered him to directGran Casino , a commercial film at the service of the ultra-famous singer Jorge Negrete . It did not work at the box office, but despite everything, the director ended up commissioning another film,The great skull , and they also granted him Mexican nationality, so he established his residence there permanently.

Soon he obtains financing for his very personalLos olvidados , which portrayed the harshness of the life of street children, and which is considered one of the pinnacles of Latin American cinema. He won the best director award at Cannes in 1951, which meant the rediscovery of Luis Buñuel at an international level, since he had been forgotten despite the repercussions of his first silent films.

Throughout the 50s, he maintained a very high level in tapes such asSusanna ,The brute ,he ,Essay of a crime orAbismos de pasión , his very particular version of ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë . Curiously, all these tapes have an insufficient budget, sound problems, technical deficiencies… And yet they are always suggestive and intense.Robinson Crusoe , shot in English, was the first film in Eastmancolor.

The great Francisco Rabal placed himself under his orders for the first time inNazarín , adaptation of a novel by Benito Pérez Galdós , and one of his best works. In fact, it won the International Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959. It is paradoxical, to say the least, that the same director of that film, about a charitable priest, shot two years laterViridiana , interpreted precisely as an obfuscated criticism of Catholic charity, and in which the idealism of the protagonist falls on deaf ears, a novice with remorse for the death of her uncle, who was about to rape her, and who welcomes a group of vagabonds

Basically, both films are not so different, and present as protagonists two religious characters –Father Nazario and Viridiana–, admirable, idealistic and quixotic, who dedicate their lives to helping and solving problems in a world that is often ungrateful with the good people.

Viridiana has an exemplary work by the Mexican Silvia Pinal –possibly the actress that the director made the most of–, and by the Spanish Francisco Rabal and Fernando Rey . It marked the return to Spain of the exiled Buñuel. But finally its exhibition was prohibited in the country, after a very hard article published in L’Osservatore Romano, for details such as the coarse and irreverent reconstruction of “The Last Supper” with the beggars. Despite the controversy, the film won this time at the Cannes Film Festival the Palme d’Or, the highest award.

Was Buñuel anti-religious? Despite his declared atheism, he did not allow religion to be badmouthed in his presence. According to a Mexican neighbor, during Holy Week he saw him alone, in the garden of his house, beating a drum, in memory of the drums of his native Calanda. He wasn’t especially nationalistic, but he always missed his country.

Throughout the 1960s, the Aragonese maestro continued to be in good shape, and he shot one of his most rounded films, the magneticThe exterminating angel , co-written with Luis Alcoriza , and which represents a return to surrealism. Several upper-class characters from Mexico discover after dinner that they cannot leave the room for an unknown reason. After a few days trapped, they progressively lose their good habits and end up becoming true savages.

It’s also another great movie.Simón del desierto , where he plays the figure of an authentic Christian ascetic, Simeon the Stylite, who was born in Cilicia in the 4th century, and who spent 37 years of penance on a column in the desert. Unfortunately, Buñuel’s budget ran out in half, and he had to leave the film at half-length. He won the Special Jury Prize in Venice and the International Federation of Critics (Fipresci).

This film ended the Mexican stage of the director. Since then he would dedicate himself to French productions, such asDiary of a Waitress , adaptation of a novel by Octave Mirbeau, produced by Serge Silberman. Due to the success of the film, this producer offers Buñuel comfortable budgets and absolute creative freedom. It is curious that when the director does not lack for anything, and although his films continue to have interest and great discoveries, they are not as round as before. Catherine Deneuve –Who already wishes her films with Buñuel were as round as those of Silvia Pinal– stars in Belle de jour , the Golden Lion in Venice, about an unhappily married woman who ends up becoming a prostitute in a brothel, andTristana , shot again in Spain. The latter is a new foray into the universe of Galdós, with Deneuve playing a young woman who becomes the lover of her guardian. It earned an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

Buñuel ended up becoming the first Spaniard to win the statuette in the same category withThe discreet charm of the bourgeoisie , also of French nationality. It forms a kind of trilogy with two other films that also question the classic film narrative, and deal with the theme of chance:the milky way andThe ghost of freedom . His last job wasThat obscure object of desire , where Matheu Faber (Fernando Rey) recounts his relationship with Conchita, an irresistible woman he has tried to win over time, during a train trip. Carole Bouquet and Ángela Molina share the female lead.

In his later years he received numerous awards. George Cukor hosted a Hollywood dinner in his honor, which was attended by some of the greatest filmmakers of all time: Alfred Hitchcock , Billy Wilder , Robert Mulligan , and William Wyler . The University of Zaragoza named him an honorary doctorate, and the Pompidou Center organized a tribute.

Luis Buñuel died on July 29, 1983, at his residence in Mexico City, together with his wife, to whom he said his last words: “Now I really do die.”