Showing posts with label Luis Buñuel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Luis Buñuel. Show all posts

Saturday, 24 February 2024

Cinema Stories

 

During a party, Luis Buñuel, seduced by Leonora Carrington’s beauty and emboldened by the notion that she had transcended all bourgeois morality, proposed (with his characteristic bluntness) that she become his mistress. Without even waiting for her answer, he gave her the key to the secret studio that he used as a love nest and told her to meet him at three o’clock the next afternoon. Early the next morning, Leonora went to visit the place alone. She found it tasteless: It looked exactly like a motel room. Taking advantage of the fact that she was in her menstrual period, she covered her hands with blood and used them to make bloody handprints all over the walls in order to provide a bit of decoration for that anonymous, impersonal room. Even though Buñuel was known for his sense of humor, he never spoke to her again.

Thursday, 20 October 2022

El río y la muerte (1954)


 

In a backward village where members of two rival families have kept killing each other for generations, a young doctor is expected to avenge his father.

Although more conventionally made, this Buñuel film is highly dramatic and even shocks with its relentless depiction of the horrifying events, all committed in the name of a dubious family tradition.



 

Tuesday, 4 January 2022

El ángel exterminador (1982)


 

The guests at an upper-class dinner party find themselves unable to leave.

This true Buñuel masterpiece is made under his unmistakably flawless direction and presents his favourite theme of exposing and ridiculing the bourgeois mindset and way of life - with surrealist means, of course.

Halliwell***: "Fascinating surrealist fantasia on themes elaborated with even more panache in The Discreet Charme of the Bourgeouisie. Nevertheless, one of its director's key films."

Maltin***1/2: "Wry assault on bourgeois manners by master surrealist Buñuel." 



Sunday, 26 December 2021

Abismos de pasión (1954)


 

A partial retelling of Wuthering Heights in 19th century Mexico.

Wonderfully photographed and directed, this adaptation of the classic novel goes straight to the overheated passions and never lets loose; generally, a mainstream production with occasional Buñuel touches sprinkled in.

Maltin**1/2: "Strikingly directed but talky, overbaked, ultimately unsuccessful version..." 



Saturday, 3 February 2018

La voie lactée (1969)


Two drifters go on a pilgrimage from France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and along the way, they hitchhike, beg for food, and face the Christian dogmas and heresies from different Ages.