I would reckon over the past decade I seem to post one blog for every three I write in my head beforehand. Sometimes it’s a matter of an idea slipping away, often it requires more research that I never get around to doing, and occasionally it just seems like the wrong time. I revisited Luis Bunuel’s first and last feature films over a week ago with the idea to write this here blog but with the world on fire I wondered if it wasn’t a little tone deaf. People have different methods of coping with external strife. Some people want to silence all voices not directly helping the cause, and some people just go silent so they don’t add any of their own noise to a crowded discussion. I personally have to wrestle with the double-edged sword of realizing that as a boring old white guy, I don’t need to chime in on how disenfranchised people are feeling. On the other hand, too many people are accusing others like me of being complicit in white supremacy by not actively posting things. Well damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
A lot of people within the film world are using this time to draw some attention to black filmmakers and their grossly under-represented stories. This is another reason why celebrating two surrealist gems from a Spaniard might seem a little out of touch. There are numerous resources to watch some important works from black filmmakers and nearly every streaming service is making it a little easier to spotlight some of these titles. I have been told that Criterion has made a number of titles free to stream for people who don’t yet have their channel. I would like to point out that removing Gone with the Wind from HBO Max shortly after launch seems to be missing the point, but kudos to them getting ahead of things.
I have never been a fan of blocking out films that are problematic. In fact I think it’s far more important to watch those films and learn from them. You should know what anti-Jewish propaganda looked like in 1930’s Germany. If there’s a film with white people in black face, take it in, take a good look at it, get angry, don’t pretend these things don’t exist. Are you watching a British film set in India with white actors in makeup donning an accent? Let that soak in and try to breathe in just how racist and tone deaf many film industries have been for decades. You should also take note of how things have changed, ask yourself if certain movies could be made today, and why things have changed to avoid it. I think it’s important to view cinema’s shameful past so that we can hopefully learn from it. Should we be “canceling” classics of cinema because modern audiences have evolved? Maybe, but pretending these films weren’t made is not the answer.
Again I should point out I’m a film historian and a straight white man, so take that under consideration when deciding if I have a valid point. I’ve always set out from the start to let this blog be exclusively about cinema. For that reason I tend to filter whatever might be happening in the world through the prism of my area of expertise. One of the most difficult things I’ve had to learn is when to just shut up and listen. So I’ll leave it at that and we can discuss Bunuel’s respective alpha and omega.
When I was a younger man getting into cinema I’d usually check out ten films at a time. I’d often do this 3 times a week, maybe taking a break if I had any time left over to watch things I recorded off of TV or dig into the ever increasing pile of DVDs I had. Being as systematic as I could, I would usually watch movies in the order of length, so longest movie first, shortest movie last. If I got more than one film from a director I’d watch those chronologically. Well three directors always got me a little more excited than others: Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, and Luis Bunuel. For Antonioni there was something about the existential dread of the bored and privileged that resonated with my disillusioned younger self. I wasn’t as aware that subconsciously his elaborate long takes hit the right nerve centers in my brain. For Godard he was the wild-card. He threw out all conventional notions of filmmaking, and I wasn’t sure what I would get from movie to movie. Bunuel’s surrealism appealed to me greatly, but I think he was in many ways the synthesis of those two other directors. Bunuel’s films often lacked closure like Antonioni, his characters were often bored and rich, but he played with the language of cinema in some of the same ways Godard did.
L’age d’or (1930) is not Bunuel’s first film. He collaborated with Salvador Dali on Un Chien Andalou, but that was clearly a short. Although L’age is barely over an hour, it still counts as a feature. Bunuel would follow it up with Land Without Bread (another short, this time a documentary) and wouldn’t make a proper feature film until 1947. So for the intellectual artists who dabbled in surrealism, L’age d’or stood as a great but singular offering. Cocteau also made his directorial debut in 1930 with Blood of a Poet, and instead of a grand wave of talking surrealist films, these proved to be aberrations. Perhaps it was due to complicated funding, technical limitations (both films were shot silent), but surrealism in film was soon relegated to experimental shorts (Meshes of the Afternoon) or the occasional dream sequence (Spellbound).
Dali’s contribution to L’age d’or has been the subject of debate for decades. His involvement is typically acknowledged as minimal to non-existent here. The collaboration had already soured before production began so many film historians cite this as Bunuel’s first solo work. Un Chien Andalou was deliberately conceived to have no plot, simply surrealist imagery and some loose dream logic. In an early film history class I was pointed out for being “no fun” when my teacher asked us to interpret the film and I mentioned it had no meaning. L’age d’or by contrast has some sort of story, one that links in many ways to his final film That Obscure Object of Desire. If you can boil the plot down, you can simply say a couple are trying to have sex, and religion, society, and nature keep getting in their way. Sexual frustration was deeply rooted in Bunuel’s work, and it became a lifelong obsession, which can be blamed on his Catholic upbringing, even if that is a potential over-simplification.
I often argue that Bunuel’s best work doesn’t rely on story, sure sometimes he can construct a great narrative to go with his imagery (Los Olvidados, Viridiana, Bell du Jour), but more often he takes a premise and works from there. The Exterminating Angel and Simon of the Desert are two works that align well with L’age d’or. You can describe the films with a single sentence, but that doesn’t begin to explain why they are great. That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) falls somewhat in between the two. It lacks much of the overt surrealistic imagery of some of his best work, but from a plot standpoint it is incredibly simple and straight forward. Essentially a wealthy middle-aged man is trying to have sex with a girl who does nothing but tease and torment him.
Sexual frustration might have been the overarching thesis in Bunuel’s work but it has never been so overtly the point as it is in his final film. Some directors seem to wrap up what they’re about with their final film (Ozu, Bergman), but with Bunuel it seems more happenstance. That Obscure Object of Desire isn’t a penultimate summation of a lengthy career, it just happens to explicitly hammer home a predominant theme. Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie feels more like that last grand statement, and perhaps Bunuel conceived it as such, churning out two additional films that in different ways were echoes of the past. That Obscure Object was one of Bunuel’s greatest hits, it earned him a pair of Oscar nominations and hit a pretty large international audience.
Both films take wildly different approaches to telling a similar story. L’age d’or is much more chaotic. Gaston Modot is the thwarted male lead, who appeared in a number of surrealist films as well as Rules of the Game in 1939. Over the past several years I’ve grown to love Rules of the Game a lot, but I never connected the dots before. He also appeared in Children of Paradise and Grand Illusion for what it’s worth. Lya Lys, his German co-star had a slightly less distinguished career who was out of the industry by 1940. Well known artists Max Ernst and Josep Llorens Artigas have small parts as well.
L’age d’or is the result of an amateur to put it plainly. It might be something of a masterpiece, but it betrays Bunuel’s youth. After the sensation of Un Chien Andalou this has the feeling of trying to top the previous film. It is somewhat sacrilegious, but also just absurd. Our “hero” is anything but, he assaults a blind man, kicks a dog, emphatically steps on a beetle, and is openly hostile. He even finds some time for some light sexual assault. This has the air of a story told by a young man who wants to piss people off. It was successful in that aim. The film was denounced by most church groups and sadly went unseen for decades in some places. Even the surviving print is in rough shape. Bunuel in an effort to conserve funds used nearly every foot of film he had for the 63 minutes. Essentially meaning there is an improvisational feel to the picture. There wasn’t the luxury for multiple takes and extra coverage, so there are some moments that feel like they were making it up as they went along. The charm works though, and it’s still a very fun film to watch. The running time certainly helps it’s cause.
That Obscure Object of Desire has some source material. The Woman and the Puppet was an 1898 novel by Pierre Louys that was supposedly adapted several other times. Fernando Rey was often considered Bunuel’s surrogate in his later films, as Mastroianni was for Fellini. They first worked together in Viridiana back in 1961, and collaborated on three more pictures. Rey is perfect for this role as a man slightly out of touch with all the money and half the patience necessary for this task. He is just oblivious enough to not realize what is happening to him, vain to the point of blindness. For the female lead, Bunuel had an interesting idea. Although he didn’t name her specifically, it was believed that Maria Schneider was his first choice who had to drop out. After a few drinks Bunuel and producer Serge Silberman decided to use two actresses for the same role. This was hardly the first time someone had the idea to use one person in the same role, but instead of having different actresses play a role in different stages of their life, Bunuel used them interchangeably, sometimes even within the same scene. Although Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina look slightly similar they are clearly two different people.
That Obscure Object of Desire is less openly surrealist than most of Bunuel’s late work. It hearkens back more to his straightforward Mexican films. However those movies were always tinted with surrealism, slightly odd touches that made the film feel anything but normal. Here we have a chorus of left-wing terrorists committing random acts of terrorism as a backdrop throughout the film. Rarely are they commented on, but frequently seen in the background and usually offer no more than a line on turning around to avoid the traffic jam they caused. In Bunuel’s world political unrest exist but his characters are oblivious to it and often just roll their eyes at the inconvenience of it all.
This is arguably the central theme of Bunuel’s work. In Belle de Jour, Marcel is something of a gangster, but it’s more an object of fascination or excitement for Severine than any cause she needs to adopt. In this way Bunuel’s films always seem to show you how less popular people may be thinking. Let’s face it, as much as change needs to happen in this world, a lot of people are probably more concerned about blocking off streets or interrupting their shows with news conferences than actively dismantling white supremacy. Bunuel understood this and made a point of showing his main characters as oblivious to the serious issues around them. It makes them seem more petty and easier to laugh at. Rey’s Mathieu seems to be the only one not in on the joke. We all know that Conchita will perpetually tease him and lead him on, but Mathieu still thinks of himself as a worthy virile mate. His money and position allow him to think he’s worthy of a woman half his age, who despite having no money of her own, is in no way beholden to him. She knows she’ll survive and seems to only reconcile long enough to torment him some more. To quote Krusty the Klown, it's only funny when he's "a sap with dignity".
I might hesitate to call That Obscure Object of Desire a masterpiece. L’age d’or is, albeit a flawed one, and in some people’s estimates a masterpiece can’t be flawed. That Obscure Object of Desire is a more mature film clearly, as it was made by a man 47 years older than the director of L’age d’or. Bunuel’s sense of humor got a little more subtle, and he loved poking fun at the absurdity of high society, illustrated most succinctly in The Exterminating Angel and Discreet Charm. If for some reason you bemoan Bunuel’s surrealist tendencies and long for a more conventional narrative that’s just a little off kilter, this would be right up your alley. There’s a reason Bunuel was always among my top 10 favorite directors, he was great from the first to the last. He never got a chance to make another film although he lived for 6 more years after this.
A lot of people within the film world are using this time to draw some attention to black filmmakers and their grossly under-represented stories. This is another reason why celebrating two surrealist gems from a Spaniard might seem a little out of touch. There are numerous resources to watch some important works from black filmmakers and nearly every streaming service is making it a little easier to spotlight some of these titles. I have been told that Criterion has made a number of titles free to stream for people who don’t yet have their channel. I would like to point out that removing Gone with the Wind from HBO Max shortly after launch seems to be missing the point, but kudos to them getting ahead of things.
I have never been a fan of blocking out films that are problematic. In fact I think it’s far more important to watch those films and learn from them. You should know what anti-Jewish propaganda looked like in 1930’s Germany. If there’s a film with white people in black face, take it in, take a good look at it, get angry, don’t pretend these things don’t exist. Are you watching a British film set in India with white actors in makeup donning an accent? Let that soak in and try to breathe in just how racist and tone deaf many film industries have been for decades. You should also take note of how things have changed, ask yourself if certain movies could be made today, and why things have changed to avoid it. I think it’s important to view cinema’s shameful past so that we can hopefully learn from it. Should we be “canceling” classics of cinema because modern audiences have evolved? Maybe, but pretending these films weren’t made is not the answer.
Again I should point out I’m a film historian and a straight white man, so take that under consideration when deciding if I have a valid point. I’ve always set out from the start to let this blog be exclusively about cinema. For that reason I tend to filter whatever might be happening in the world through the prism of my area of expertise. One of the most difficult things I’ve had to learn is when to just shut up and listen. So I’ll leave it at that and we can discuss Bunuel’s respective alpha and omega.
When I was a younger man getting into cinema I’d usually check out ten films at a time. I’d often do this 3 times a week, maybe taking a break if I had any time left over to watch things I recorded off of TV or dig into the ever increasing pile of DVDs I had. Being as systematic as I could, I would usually watch movies in the order of length, so longest movie first, shortest movie last. If I got more than one film from a director I’d watch those chronologically. Well three directors always got me a little more excited than others: Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, and Luis Bunuel. For Antonioni there was something about the existential dread of the bored and privileged that resonated with my disillusioned younger self. I wasn’t as aware that subconsciously his elaborate long takes hit the right nerve centers in my brain. For Godard he was the wild-card. He threw out all conventional notions of filmmaking, and I wasn’t sure what I would get from movie to movie. Bunuel’s surrealism appealed to me greatly, but I think he was in many ways the synthesis of those two other directors. Bunuel’s films often lacked closure like Antonioni, his characters were often bored and rich, but he played with the language of cinema in some of the same ways Godard did.
L’age d’or (1930) is not Bunuel’s first film. He collaborated with Salvador Dali on Un Chien Andalou, but that was clearly a short. Although L’age is barely over an hour, it still counts as a feature. Bunuel would follow it up with Land Without Bread (another short, this time a documentary) and wouldn’t make a proper feature film until 1947. So for the intellectual artists who dabbled in surrealism, L’age d’or stood as a great but singular offering. Cocteau also made his directorial debut in 1930 with Blood of a Poet, and instead of a grand wave of talking surrealist films, these proved to be aberrations. Perhaps it was due to complicated funding, technical limitations (both films were shot silent), but surrealism in film was soon relegated to experimental shorts (Meshes of the Afternoon) or the occasional dream sequence (Spellbound).
Dali’s contribution to L’age d’or has been the subject of debate for decades. His involvement is typically acknowledged as minimal to non-existent here. The collaboration had already soured before production began so many film historians cite this as Bunuel’s first solo work. Un Chien Andalou was deliberately conceived to have no plot, simply surrealist imagery and some loose dream logic. In an early film history class I was pointed out for being “no fun” when my teacher asked us to interpret the film and I mentioned it had no meaning. L’age d’or by contrast has some sort of story, one that links in many ways to his final film That Obscure Object of Desire. If you can boil the plot down, you can simply say a couple are trying to have sex, and religion, society, and nature keep getting in their way. Sexual frustration was deeply rooted in Bunuel’s work, and it became a lifelong obsession, which can be blamed on his Catholic upbringing, even if that is a potential over-simplification.
I often argue that Bunuel’s best work doesn’t rely on story, sure sometimes he can construct a great narrative to go with his imagery (Los Olvidados, Viridiana, Bell du Jour), but more often he takes a premise and works from there. The Exterminating Angel and Simon of the Desert are two works that align well with L’age d’or. You can describe the films with a single sentence, but that doesn’t begin to explain why they are great. That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) falls somewhat in between the two. It lacks much of the overt surrealistic imagery of some of his best work, but from a plot standpoint it is incredibly simple and straight forward. Essentially a wealthy middle-aged man is trying to have sex with a girl who does nothing but tease and torment him.
Sexual frustration might have been the overarching thesis in Bunuel’s work but it has never been so overtly the point as it is in his final film. Some directors seem to wrap up what they’re about with their final film (Ozu, Bergman), but with Bunuel it seems more happenstance. That Obscure Object of Desire isn’t a penultimate summation of a lengthy career, it just happens to explicitly hammer home a predominant theme. Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie feels more like that last grand statement, and perhaps Bunuel conceived it as such, churning out two additional films that in different ways were echoes of the past. That Obscure Object was one of Bunuel’s greatest hits, it earned him a pair of Oscar nominations and hit a pretty large international audience.
Both films take wildly different approaches to telling a similar story. L’age d’or is much more chaotic. Gaston Modot is the thwarted male lead, who appeared in a number of surrealist films as well as Rules of the Game in 1939. Over the past several years I’ve grown to love Rules of the Game a lot, but I never connected the dots before. He also appeared in Children of Paradise and Grand Illusion for what it’s worth. Lya Lys, his German co-star had a slightly less distinguished career who was out of the industry by 1940. Well known artists Max Ernst and Josep Llorens Artigas have small parts as well.
L’age d’or is the result of an amateur to put it plainly. It might be something of a masterpiece, but it betrays Bunuel’s youth. After the sensation of Un Chien Andalou this has the feeling of trying to top the previous film. It is somewhat sacrilegious, but also just absurd. Our “hero” is anything but, he assaults a blind man, kicks a dog, emphatically steps on a beetle, and is openly hostile. He even finds some time for some light sexual assault. This has the air of a story told by a young man who wants to piss people off. It was successful in that aim. The film was denounced by most church groups and sadly went unseen for decades in some places. Even the surviving print is in rough shape. Bunuel in an effort to conserve funds used nearly every foot of film he had for the 63 minutes. Essentially meaning there is an improvisational feel to the picture. There wasn’t the luxury for multiple takes and extra coverage, so there are some moments that feel like they were making it up as they went along. The charm works though, and it’s still a very fun film to watch. The running time certainly helps it’s cause.
That Obscure Object of Desire has some source material. The Woman and the Puppet was an 1898 novel by Pierre Louys that was supposedly adapted several other times. Fernando Rey was often considered Bunuel’s surrogate in his later films, as Mastroianni was for Fellini. They first worked together in Viridiana back in 1961, and collaborated on three more pictures. Rey is perfect for this role as a man slightly out of touch with all the money and half the patience necessary for this task. He is just oblivious enough to not realize what is happening to him, vain to the point of blindness. For the female lead, Bunuel had an interesting idea. Although he didn’t name her specifically, it was believed that Maria Schneider was his first choice who had to drop out. After a few drinks Bunuel and producer Serge Silberman decided to use two actresses for the same role. This was hardly the first time someone had the idea to use one person in the same role, but instead of having different actresses play a role in different stages of their life, Bunuel used them interchangeably, sometimes even within the same scene. Although Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina look slightly similar they are clearly two different people.
That Obscure Object of Desire is less openly surrealist than most of Bunuel’s late work. It hearkens back more to his straightforward Mexican films. However those movies were always tinted with surrealism, slightly odd touches that made the film feel anything but normal. Here we have a chorus of left-wing terrorists committing random acts of terrorism as a backdrop throughout the film. Rarely are they commented on, but frequently seen in the background and usually offer no more than a line on turning around to avoid the traffic jam they caused. In Bunuel’s world political unrest exist but his characters are oblivious to it and often just roll their eyes at the inconvenience of it all.
This is arguably the central theme of Bunuel’s work. In Belle de Jour, Marcel is something of a gangster, but it’s more an object of fascination or excitement for Severine than any cause she needs to adopt. In this way Bunuel’s films always seem to show you how less popular people may be thinking. Let’s face it, as much as change needs to happen in this world, a lot of people are probably more concerned about blocking off streets or interrupting their shows with news conferences than actively dismantling white supremacy. Bunuel understood this and made a point of showing his main characters as oblivious to the serious issues around them. It makes them seem more petty and easier to laugh at. Rey’s Mathieu seems to be the only one not in on the joke. We all know that Conchita will perpetually tease him and lead him on, but Mathieu still thinks of himself as a worthy virile mate. His money and position allow him to think he’s worthy of a woman half his age, who despite having no money of her own, is in no way beholden to him. She knows she’ll survive and seems to only reconcile long enough to torment him some more. To quote Krusty the Klown, it's only funny when he's "a sap with dignity".
I might hesitate to call That Obscure Object of Desire a masterpiece. L’age d’or is, albeit a flawed one, and in some people’s estimates a masterpiece can’t be flawed. That Obscure Object of Desire is a more mature film clearly, as it was made by a man 47 years older than the director of L’age d’or. Bunuel’s sense of humor got a little more subtle, and he loved poking fun at the absurdity of high society, illustrated most succinctly in The Exterminating Angel and Discreet Charm. If for some reason you bemoan Bunuel’s surrealist tendencies and long for a more conventional narrative that’s just a little off kilter, this would be right up your alley. There’s a reason Bunuel was always among my top 10 favorite directors, he was great from the first to the last. He never got a chance to make another film although he lived for 6 more years after this.
