Director
/ Screenwriter / Editor / Producer / Composer
1900 - 1983
Born February 22,
Calanda, Teruel, Aragón, Spain
Key
Production Countries: France, Mexico, Spain
Key Genres: Satire, Black Comedy, Surrealist Film, Drama, Avant-garde/Experimental, Comedy Drama, Comedy, Religious Comedy
Key
Collaborators: Jean-Claude
Carriere (Screenwriter), Serge Silberman (Producer), Michel Piccoli
(Leading Character Player), Gabriel Figueroa (Cinematographer), Carlos
Savage (Editor), Edward Fitzgerald (Production Designer), Fernando Rey
(Leading Player), Luis Alcoriza (Screenwriter), Julio Alejandro
(Screenwriter), Pierre Guffroy
(Production Designer)
Highly
Recommended:
L'Âge d'or (1930), Los Olvidados (1950),
El (1952), Viridiana
(1961), The Exterminating Angel (1962), Tristana
(1970), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), The Phantom of
Liberty (1974)
Recommended:
Land Without Bread
(1932), The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955), Nazarín (1958), Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), Belle de jour (1967), That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)
1,000
Greatest Films: Un
chien andalou (1928), L'Âge d'or (1930), Land Without Bread (1932), Los Olvidados (1950), El (1952), The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955), Nazarín
(1958), Viridiana
(1961), The Exterminating Angel (1962), Simon of the Desert (1965), Belle de jour (1967), Tristana (1970), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
(1972), The Phantom of
Liberty (1974), That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)
"Perhaps the easiest way
to deal with Buñuel's career is to suggest that certain avatars
of Luis Buñuel may be identified at different historical
periods. The first Luis Buñuel is the Surrealist. The second
Luis Buñuel is the all-but-anonymous journeyman film
professional. The third is the Mexican director. The fourth is
the Luis Buñuel who gradually made his way back to Europe by
way of a few French films made in alternation with films in
Mexico. The last Luis Buñuel, following his emergence in the
mid-1960s, was the past master, at once awesome and beloved." -
E.
Rubinstein (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers,
1991)
"Though
the Church and bourgeoisie were his prime targets, beggars might
be thieves and rapists, blind men paedophiles, virginal cripples
harridans, and housewives afternoon whores; all were calmly and
coolly examined as if insects under the microscope, with the
fascinated, bemused Buñuel never
hammering home a moral sermon, but merely revealing, in a
strange spirit of sympathy, the fundamental comedy of the human
condition. He was, in short, one of cinema's greatest, most
unassertive masters." -
Geoff
Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)
"Although
Buñuel made some haunting films in the
early 1950s - most notably El Bruto and El, the
richest period of his work runs from 1958 to 1970, years in
which Buñuel produced a series of shattering works that could
almost claim to be considered masterpieces of the cinema." -
David
Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999)
"Fortunately,
somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only
thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people
keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether." -
Luis Buñuel
Last
updated:
11/01/2008 01:31 AM.
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bill@theyshootpictures.com.
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