Luis Buñuel: Spaniard and Surrealist

Peter Harcourt

Film Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 3. (Spring, 1967), pp. 2-19.

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 PETER HARCOURT
Luis Bunuel:

Spaniard and Surrealist

As a view of life, surrealism begins with the It was under Breton's leadership that the sur-
recognition of the disruptive violence at the cen- realist movement began to consolidate itself into
ter of man and with his essential isolation with- something like an organized system of thought.
in the civilized conventions of polite society Central to its philosophy was the determination
-conventions apparently designed to frustrate to honor the claims of the subconscious and to
his instinctual needs. It thrives upon sharp accept the validity of the confusion of our
contrasts and unexpected juxtapositions, upon dreams. From this concern, which recom-
images that acknowledge the unalterable irra- mended less a methodology than a state of
tionalities of human life. For it is essentially heightened awareness, certain tendencies could
pessimistic. Like Freud, its patron saint and in- follow. To begin with, the art product itself
tellectual apologist, surrealism has gloomy pros- could appear as less important than the in-
pects for the future development of man. sights it recorded. Speaking of the compara-
As an organized movement, it really began tive poverty of French surrealist verse, Anthony
in Ziirich during the First World War. Though Hartley has written: 3
not yet called surrealism, the philosophical and The result of artistic activity, the poem or the paint-
artistic movement that formed itself around ing, is seen as merely incidental to the inner re-
Hugo Ball and Emile Hennings at the Cafk generation of man brought about by the ascesis
Voltaire in 1917 was made up of refugees from involved in its production.
all the countries of Europe, people exiled from
their homelands by the violence of war. In the These are somewhat the same terms in which
midst of the destruction, there flickered the tiny Harold Rosenberg has talked about action paint-
hope that all this violence might help to bring ing; it is the aesthetic that has led to the cur-
about a better world. As the old world crum- rent fashion of dis~osable
I
art.
bled, man could begin again, and this time Secondly, in their concern with encouraging
could be true to both his individual and social a state of heightened awareness (itself leading
needs. And of course, Lenin himself was in quite naturally to t h e present psychedelic
Ziirich at that time. craze), the surrealists could very easily become
After the war when it moved to Paris, the obsessed with the pathological, with the sadis-
Dada movement-as this preface to surrealism tic or masochistic recesses of the mind. The
called itself-underwent a change.l Hugo Ball writings of d e Sade had been enthusiastically
h a d already surrendered leadership of t h e rediscovered, and many of the surrealist anec-
movement to the Hungarian poet and madcap, dotes that appeared in Breton's Litte'rature from
Tristan Tzara; and once in Paris, Tzara him- 1919 to 1924 showed the same concern with
self was gradually eclipsed by Andrk Breton gratuitous violence that, back in the 1790s, had
who, borrowing the term from a play by Apol- characterized de Sade. But most accessible to
linaire, first began talking about a philosophy us today (and perhaps most relevant to film)
of "surrealism": 2 are Dali's anecdotes that we find scattered
through his Secret Life:4
I believe in the future resolution of two states (in
appearance so contradictory), dream and reality, I was five years old, and it was springtime in the
into a sort of absolute reality: a s u ~ ~ d a l i t d . village of Carnbrils, near Barcelona. I was walking
BUNUEL 3

in the country with a boy smaller than I, who had itual regeneration, with the perfection of the
very blond curly hair and whom I had known only self. Indeed, this had been the pattern of many
a short time. I was on foot, and he was riding a of the Dadaists. As far back as 1921, Marcel
tricycle. With my hand on his back, I helped to Duchamp had given u p the imperfections of
push him along. life and art for the perfection of chess (we've
We got to a bridge under construction which had
as yet no railings of any kind. Suddenly, as most seen him playing chess, of course, with Man
of my ideas occur, I looked behind to make sure Ray in Rend. Clair's Entr'acte); and even be-
that no one was watching us and gave the child fore that, Hugo Ball, depressed by Tzara's un-
a quick push off the bridge. He landed on some controllable antics and his own ebbing faith
rocks fifteen feet below. I ran home to announce in any external change, had withdrawn from
the news. the scene, concerned to find in private "the
During the whole afternoon, bloodstained basins most direct way to self-help: to renounce works
were brought down from the room where the child, and make energetic attempis to re-animate one's
with a badly injured head, was going to have to own life."j I n this way, the philosophy of sur-
remain in bed for a week. The continual coming
and going and the general turmoil into which the realism could b e seen as a discipline. In one
house was thrown put me into a delightful hallu- of Breton's more self-questioning statements, h e
cinatory mood. In the small arlor, on a rocking seems to acknowledge this: "Dear imagination,
P
chair trimmed with crocheted ace that covered the
back, the arms, and the cushion of the seat, I sat
what I like about you is that you d o not for-
give."F O n this level, surrealism comes to rep-
eating cherries. The parlor looked out on the hall, resent a n obligation to oneself, a determination
so that I could observe everything that went on, not to cheat one's own feelings, not to deny
and it was almost complete1 dark, for the shutters the necessity of the "dark gods" within us (to
had been drawn to ward 0% the stifling heat. The borrow Lawrence's most appropriate phrase).
sun beating down on them lit up knots in the
wood, turning them to a fiery red like ears lighted Certainlv for Bufiuel. the ethic of surrealism
from behind. I don't recall having experienced the was see: as both a liberation and a chore:
slightest feeling of guilt over this incident. That Surrealism taught me that life has a moral meaning
evening, while taking my usual solitary walk, I re- that man cannot ignore. Through surrealism I dis-
member having savoured the beauty of each blade covered for the first time that man is not free. I
of grass. used to believe man's freedom was unlimited, but
Partly true, partly fictional (our common sense in surrealism I saw a discipline to be followed. It
makes us assume), such a n anecdote is never- was one of the great lessons of my life, a marvel-
theless extraordinary i n its combination of sadis- lous, poetic step forward.
tic violence followed by a minutely detailed Yet this path too has its own excesses. I n its
registration of t h e senses, as well a s in its im- social passivity, it could lead to the extremes
plicit flouting of the conventional sentimentali- of personal isolation that can drive a man to
ties about the innocence of childhood. It is not suicide; as in its pursuit of inner perfection, it
irrelevant to bear such a n experience in mind could encourage a narcissistic involvement with
when w e come to contemplate the moral com- t h e self that could make a person not only
plexities of Joseph in Buiiuel's Diary of a Cham- socially ineffectual but positively destructive in
bermaid. T o b e appreciated, such an anecdote his relationships with other people. I n the world
demands from us a n analyst's patience and sus- of Buiiuel, this is undoubtedly part of the prob-
pension of a moral point of view. W e are asked lem of both Viridiana and Nazarin.
not to applaud or to condemn, b u t simply to Finally-to complete somewhat this abbrevi-
understand. ated survey-the surrealist view of life never
However, if this aspect of surrealism could totally renounced its belief in t h e possibility of
slip into t h e excess of moral nihilism, it could a better world which had characterized it since
also lead into a n apparently opposite state of Dada. From the very beginning, in spite of its
mind. I t could equally b e concerned with spir- irrationalism, it had maintained a curious flirta-
4 BUNUEL

tion with the rationalities of communism. After especially outside of France, the surrealists we
all, both the surrealists and the communists be- are most conscious of have all, in fact, been
lieved in revolution as a means of achieving this painters-artists largely independent of the po-
better world. In the thirties, when the Spanish lemical force of words. Indeed, with the excep-
Civil War actually split the surrealist move- tion of Tanguy and later of Magritte, the names
ment, Andri! Breton and his followers remained we most remember-Picabia, Dali, Mir6, even
uninvolved, while men like Paul Eluard under- Picasso for a time-have also all been Spaniards.
went a gradual change. By 1936, not only It is possibly chiefly their Spanishness that
could Eluard talk in terms of his life being unites them, that has kept them true to the
"deeply involved in the lives of other men," but most intuitive elements in the surrealist view
his verse as well moved outwards from the ex- of life. For in many ways, Spain is intrinsically
quisite intimacies of La Capitale de la Douleur a surrealist country, maintaining side by side
(1926) to the more politically engagk verse of the mediaeval extremes of elegance and cruelty;
his later collections. And et, as we'll have oc- as in many ways Luis Buiiuel is the most prob-
casion to note again fur der on, the defeat of ing surrealist of them all.
the Republicans at the end of the Spanish war, A land of extremes both in climate and cul-
which was felt by many people to be the de- ture, a huge dustbowl surrounded by the sea,
feat of humanity, must have been seen by some combining courtly dignity with animal brutal-
of the surrealists as the final justification of their ity, Spain does seem to be a naturally surrealist
socially passive view of life. While for Buiiuel, country. Its national sport-the bull-fight-is
a Spaniard, it is impossible to calculate the emblematic: a ballet of elegance and blood.
extent to which this defeat has been one of Like Sweden, culturally Spain is outside Eu-
the major sources of his own recurring pessi- rope, though more of the body than of the
mism. The outbreak of the Second World War mind; for unlike Sweden, Spain's feeling of iso-
in 1939 could have offered small grounds for lation from the history of Europe is not the
any renewal of hope. result of a cunning neutrality. Spain has had
its own war that has cut across the historically
Although polyglot in its ori ins and surrounded greater wars of Europe. Yet for the Spaniards,
%
by violence, surrealism, by ecoming French in Europe's problems may well have seemed pro-
both its literature and philosophy, tended to vincial. The people of Spain failed to win their
become more intellectual and more civilized. war.
In fact, there is an inherent discrepancy be- Luis Buiiuel, born on February 22, 1900, in
tween the issuing of manifestoes, as Breton was Calanda in the province of Saragosa, is first and
fond of doing, and the belief in the intuitive foremost a Spaniard and after that a surrealist.
powers of the subconscious. Manifestoes are al- His view of life has developed from this pri-
ways cerebral and polemical, whereas the lan- mary fact. His inheritance has been Spanish, as
guage of dreams that these manifestoes claimed his response to life seems largely to have been
to believe in is always more intuitive. There is intuitive. It is only in his more playful moods
thus at the heart of surrealism as a movement that he sometimes seems cerebral, and in this
a kind of hypocrisy, or at least a superficiality way partly French.
that could easily degenerate into the futile A crucial part of this Spanish inheritance was
pleasures of striving simply to shock the bour- his Jesuit education.8 Spanish Catholicism, per-
geoisie. Whereas at the heart of surrealism as haps more extremely than that of any other
a view of life, there remains the recognition country, must have brought home to the young
of the irreconcilable claims both of the indi- Buiiuel the surrealist antagonism between the
vidual and of society upon which our civiliza- ideals of the spirit and the exigencies of the
tion has been insecurely based. It is thus per- flesh, as it would undoubtedly have brought
haps appropriate that for most of us today, home to him the terrifying gap between the
Luis Buliuel
directing
Sylvia
Pinal in
Viridinna.

rich security of the church and the destitute, more tenuous. If evil is intrinsic, if the impulse
precarious state of whole sections of the Span- towards destruction is dec,ply planted in man's
ish people. Yet it is a mistake, I've always nature-as Christianity hau always taught and
felt, to see this influence as negative in any as the Parisian surrealists were excited to re-
simple way. Not only has Buiiuel returned to affirm, as if making a new discovery-then the
religious considerations in his films with such pro1)lem for any civilization is to find some
regularity that they must be taken as one of w'iy of containing it. Here too, the church
the mainsprings of his art, but it seems to me may have helped.
that a large part of what is most positive in While rejecting the metaphysical consolations
his films could have come from this early train- of Christianity, Bufiuel nevertheless seemed to
ing as well. gain from Spanish Catholicism an urgent recog-
For instance, at the center of Bufiuel's vision nition of the importance of ritual in combatting
is what the surrealists were to call the destruc- our more unmanageable desires. Whether a
tive forces of man, what Freud has categorized violent ritual of expiation like the three-day
as the unmanageable "id," but what Buiiuel drumming ceremony that still forms a part of
would have known from way back as the prob- the Easter celebrations nt Ca1anda"-an inter-
lem of evil, or more probably Evil. Related to esting example, by the way, of t'ie Catholic
any form of pessimism, there is always a belief Church's quite remarkal~leability to take over
in evil as a111 abstraction, or at least as an un- what I would imagine to be a pre-Christian rit-
alterable characteristic of the nature of man. If ual of exorcism and to make it a part of its own
one simply believes in social injustice (as so resurrection myth-or the more contemplative
many fans seem to think Bufiuel does), then rituals of, for example, the celeltration of High
one can comb:it this injustice by constructive hlass, again and again in Rufiuel, references to
social action; 1)ut if one believes that evil is such ceremonies appear. Ofter they are pre-
inherent to the nature of man, then construc- sented in a bizarre, even a facetious light-like
tive action becomes that much more difficult t h e foot-washing sequence that opens the
and one's belief in improvement that much strange and magnificent El-and they are invari-
6 BUNUEL

ably tinged with the suggestion of a repressed ity to react profitably with another person or
sexuality; but sometimes, as in Viridiam, the to act constructively upon the outside world.
sense df ceremony can lend to what might Though there is always great gentleness in the
otherwise be a commonplace scene the feeling films of Buiiuel, there is also great destructive-
of intense personal involvement. Thus, hugely ness; and the destructiveness seems, socially, to
helped by the music, Don Jaime's premedi- be the greater force. Power is much more easily
tated seduction of his chaste and attractive organized than gentleness; and in any case, even
niece achieves a kind of awe in the way it is within any individual manifestation of gentle-
presented to us, an awe intermixed with pathos ness, there is also a dammed-up force of de-
at the realization that, finally, Don Jaime is structiveness threatening to break free or to
too gentle and considerate to be able to express turn in upon itself. So Don Jaime who is so
his most compulsive needs. gentle he takes pains to save the life of a bee
Intertwined with this feeling for ritual, there and who, with all his Bach and Mozart, is
is also in Buiiuel a concern with the peculiarly ultimately too civilized to enact his private
symbolic associations inherent to inanimate ob- ritual upon the body of his sleeping niece, in
jects, a concern that also must have been en- his frustration and despair hangs himself.
couraged by the iconography of the church. But if Buiiuel is in essence both a Spaniard
Whether as in L'Age d'0r it is Modot being and a surrealist, he is interesting to us today
distracted from his love-making by the foot of not only for the pervasive power of this view
a statue or Francisco's valet in El who polishes of life but for the intricacy of its development
his bicycle in his bed, in Buiiuel these actions in his individual films. He is interesting be-
take on an additional force from the symbolic cause, above all, he is an artist. The sharp con-
role the objects play in the characters' lives. trasts and conflicting points of view of his
Finally, when speculating in this way about troubled world are already present in all their
the relationship of his early environment to his force in his first three films, Un Chien Andalozl,
mature view of life, we might be tempted to L'Age &Or, and Lm Hztrdes (Land Without
relate Buiiuel's continual concern with human
solitude to the fact of his own exile. Almost all
Bread). *

his life, in order to work, he has had to live I should like to make even the most ordinary spec-
away from Spain; for large sections of it, in tator feel that he is not living in the best of all
order to live, h e has had to perform menial possible worlds.11
roles within the film industry. Although in his I have dwelt at some length both on the
private life apparently the most gentle of men,lO origins of surrealism and on what I have called
in his films Buiiuel has insistently returned to the naturally surrealist aspects of Spanish cul-
the problems of violence and evil and to the ture because it seems to me that Buiiuel is an
recognition that these passions seem often the artist who has frequently been most misunder-
result of a man being isolated and made to feel stood by those who claim most to admire him.
alone. From Modot's fury in L'Age d'Or to The genuinely surrealist elements in his work,
Toseph's rapacious fascism in Diary of a Cham- the more troubled, more involved, more intui-
bermaid, their destructive urges could be re- tive elements, have often been misinterpreted
lated to their solitary lives. as simply the zany pseudosurrealist's love of
This feeling of isolation in Bufiuel's own life the antibourgeois gag. The profundities of his
has obviously increased with his growing deaf- work, as I understand them, have been much
ness and, as I've suggested, it may well have less elucidated than his pervasive sense of fun.12
been aggravated by his life away from Spain. NOW in my urge to set things right, I don't
But in his films, it would seem to be part of want to appear too solemn about the troubled
a recognition that, finally, the individual is an master; for there certainly is in Bufiuel a strong
isolated phenomenon, with only a limited abil- iconoclastic impulse and, as in all great artists,
BUNUEL

a wry sense of the absurd. But as I hope I'll

be able to illustrate in the argument that fol-
lows, even Buiiuel's humor is edged in black
despair: more frequently than not, it is the
self-protective humor of a deeply pessimistic
person, the humor of a man distressed by his
own vision of the universe but who has also a
keen eye for the multitude of self-deceptions
that, for many of us, make life bearable.
Bufiuel has, of course, his more facile side-
the impulse to mock without self-involvement,
the kind of comic spirit that is too much of our
times, the feeble legacy of the slackest ele-
ments of surrealism. In Buiiuel's early works, Frhdhric Grange is the most perceptive in clari-
it would be convenient, of course, to attribute fying the gap between the film's intentions and
the easy levity to Dali while reserving the pro- its achievement.14 Because of the inescapably
fundity for the more serious Buiiuel! But this real nature of the cinematic image, its sculptu-
would be an oversimplification. Not only would ral physicality, the form of the film is less like
it be a slight injustice to what is genuine (or a dream than like a memory of a dream, like a
was genuine) in Dali, but it would also ignore dream recalled. Similarly, the film is less con-
the fact that Bufiuel is quite capable of simply cerned with insistent sexuality than with erotic
playing with his material in a static and facile gestures, self-consciously executed scenes, which
manner when the script he is working with and while often funny in a superficial way (the an-
the production conditions encourage him to do gry woman beating off sex with a tennis racket,
so. (The Exterminating Angel, in my view, rep- or the distressed man dragging the dead rem-
resents a late example of just such a situation.) nants of his culture behind him), they seem
But whatever the explanation and however the chiefly like an illustration to Freud. A cut from
responsibility was shared between himself and a man's face in apparent rapture to breasts and
Dali.in Bufiuel's first two films, both Un Chien back to his face bleeding with self-inflicted mar-
Andaluu and L'Age d'Or seem to alternate be- tyrdom makes a primarily mental appeal. Direct
tween what we might call gags that encourage emotional involvement is debarred by the edi-
smugness and gags that disturb. torial process. Similarly, the final image of the
Un Clzien Andalou (1928) is clearly the less couple buried in the sand only works as an
satisfactory of the two. The crucial question to illustration to a preconceived thesis (again
ask about such a film as about any kind of vaguely Freudian); and the asserted disruption
satire is whether we ourselves feel implicated of time in the titles that occur at various points
or comfortably left outside? Do we feel imagi- in the film-Eight Years Later; Fourteen Years
natively involved in a way that might lead us Before-these editorial devices, gags if you will,
to some kind of cathartic release by the end, are very unlike the direct and inescapably
or do we simply feel amused at what we have physical way a dream works upon us, genuinely
seen, do we simply feel smug? What kind of disrupting our sense of time, which then in-
experience can we take away from Un Chien vites a tentative interpretation by the mind.
Andalou? How car1 it arrest us? The images in Un Clzierz Andalou have all been
Because of its wilful obscurity, it cannot help preselected for us according to an idea about
but appeal chiefly to our minds-the very re- the workings of the subconscious and they ap-
verse of the surrealists' intentions. John Russell peal chiefly, I should have thought, to that
Taylor is onto this when he complains that the slightly superior sense in most of us that we
film only works on the level of scandal;l3 but are above being shocked or moved. Years after
 BUNUEL

the making of the film, Buiiuel himself has re- On the one hand, we have the bandits (led by
ferred to "those foolish people who have been Max Ernst), in revolt amongst themselves and
able to find the film beautiful or poetic when against the world, but disorganized, purpose-
at bottom it is really a desperate and passion- less; on the other, there are the archbishops,
ate call to murder."lj Yet it is doubtful if organized and self-contained, chanting their lit-
anyone has ever seen the film in this way. anies, but also self-petrifying, already ossified
Un Chien Andalou was a prototype for that by the time they have become the basis of
kind of "experimental" film which really, by its Western civilization. Hence the basic paradox
very nature, fails in its best intentions. If we of society: it is based on a system of order de-
took the film scene by scene and with psycho- vised to repress the instinctual life, and so must
analytical ingenuity offered to explain it a11,16 rely upon a police state to hold in check the
the explanation would probably seem more instincts that it sets out to denv. i
Hence too.
meaningful than the experience of watching the ceremony of the Majorcans-absurdly pic-
the film. This too is unlike the experience of tured as the dignitaries arrive in all their un-
a genuine dream, the complex feeling from suitable regalia and scramble over the craggy
which can never be recreated in the telling of earth-this ceremony of state is based upon
it (which is why it is often so boring listening self-deception. It denies the force of sexuality
to descriptions of other people's dreams!). (and its excremental regressions) and the even
L'Age d'Or (1930) exhibits some of the same greater force of anger that such denial brings.
problems but a greater physical power and So Modot, torn from his woman, sees sex in
complexity as well. As with all of Buiiuel, it is everything he looks at but has to content him-
less a complexity of effect than a potential self with kicking a lap-dog, crushing a cock-
complexity of response-an elusive, subjective roach, or pushing a blind man into the path
matter. Images many of which are unavoida- of an oncoming car. Even the class system
bly real are thrust before our eyes in a way springs from this deception and from the imag-
that may disturb or arrest us but which eludes ined necessity of maintaining it. The menials
easy interpretation. Speaking of Buiiuel, John in their garbage cart can carry away the shit
Russell Taylor has referred to a "sort of imagist and submit to the destructiveness of their pas-
poetry which comes from an intense heighten- sions (the waitress and the flames; the game-
ing of individual sense impressions, so that cer- keeper and his son) while the nobs carry on
tain selected objects take on the quality of a with their cocktails and polite conversation.
fetish, an instrument of ritual significance in Gaston Modot most persuasively plays the
the re-enactment of some private myth."l7 Even role of the angrily instinctive man. His life
the opening images of the scorpions fighting (he imagines, like Monteil in chambermaid) is
is both compelling to watch in its unfamiliarity dedicated to the pursuit of I'amour fou. Every-
and ambiguous in intention. First of all, it de- thing he sees in life reminds him of his sexual
clares a documentary veracity which has a rela- insistences and hence provokes his rage; while
tionship to the rest of the film which is not Lya Lys, on the other hand, tries to deny to
wholly ironic. This opening sequence contains herself the essentially physical nature of her
an apparently objective statement of t'le theme needs (she chases the cow from her bed) and
of the filn and of Bufiuel's entire world: a rec- tries to escape into imaginative revery which
ognition that life is founded upon aggression. Buiiuel presents as essentially narcissistic- the
Insects fight with one another and then are clouds in the mirror as she assiduously polishes
swallowed up by animals larger than them- her nails. Meanwhile, the cow's bell continues
selves. Such, too, it would seem to be implied, to ring.
is the nature of man. For the critics who like to think of Buiiuel
From this opening follow all the discrepan- as simply having fun at the expense of the
cies and ambiguities of Buiiuel's personal world. bourgeoisie, interpretation of the film usually
BUNUEL 9

stops at this point.18 But the essential fact ther bizarre in this film by being rescored for
about Modot is that he is defeated by the con- chamber orchestra-the Brahms makes an ironic
ventions of the society he is in rebellion against. comment on the situation that we are exposed
Like Don Jaime in Viridiana, he is trapped to. Like the spoken commentary, it reinforces
within the society that has both formed and the essential irrelevance of our civilized point
denied him. While inside it and driven on by of view, certainly of our pity, and of all the
his desire, he rebels against it (the slap over romantic aspirations of our culture.
the spilt wine); but once free from it and alone For the basic fact about this community is
at last with his woman, the social forms in- that is has no culture, no real way of life. Even
hibit him (the chairs), infantile memories con- the trappings of the church have mostly faded
fuse him (his mother's voice), the artifacts of away, leaving chiefly a few hermits in decay-
culture and religion distract him (the Wagner, ing surroundings. What the children are taught
of course, but most insistently, the statue), and in school bears no relation to the realities of
finally the business world with its own kind of life around them; yet the images of sickness
violence interferes: "The Minister of the In- and unhappiness all come from the natural
terior wants you on the telephone." By the end surroundings of these people as part of nature's
of the sequence, he has lost his woman and is gift to them, an aspect of God's goodness.
alone, impotent and self-martyred, tearing the The commentary doesn't plead. It simply
feathers from his pillow as the drums beat furi- states: the situation, a possible source of im-
ously, striving to free himself from these devils provement, then the inapplicability of this
that torment him and to rid himself of all the source for these people. This progression of
fetishes that have got in his way. three continues throughout; while visually, each
The orgy sequence that ends the film would sequence ends on an image of violence or mis-
seem to imply that these many discrepancies ery so extreme that they are generally missing
must lead to the perversion of even the finest from most of the prints in circulation in Great
elements within our civilization, where Christ Britain: a mountain goat plunging to its death,
himself plays the role of the Marquis de Sade. a donkey being devoured by bees, a sick man
In some ways, it is not too satisfactory an end- trembling with fever, an idiot's leer. Generally
ing for this basically probing work-tacked on in Bufiuel, it is the falseness of society that
as an envoi like the final image of Un Chien interferes with the fulfilment of man; in Land
Andalou, as if to summarize the preconceived Without Bread it would appear to be nature
moral. Like the final jump-cuts in Chamber- itself: "On the surface, the film attacks the
maid, the pasa doble as an accompaniment to existence of misery; more deeply, it denounces
the tufts of hair on the cross attempts to end the misery of existence . . ."19 Yet finally, once
the film with a laugh, as if finally our despair we have got over the effect of the film and paid
is essentially comic. Perhaps it is, but not really. tribute to the power of its steady passion, a
Perhaps we have to pretend it is to carry on disquieting question might suggest itself to us?
living with this dilemma without solution. For what is our relation to all this? Indeed,
L a r d Without Bread (visuals 1932; sound what is Bufiuel's? Is Land Without Bread the
1937) could represent a continuation of the kind of film that invites social action or does
scorpions, a documentary glance at an essen- it seem more like an expression of social de-
tial aspect of man. It is an investigation of the spair? These questions are perhaps most easily
total hopelessness to be found within an arid answered by reference to some further films.
recess of the same stream of Western culture
that is symbolically present throughout the film For eighteen years, from 1932 to 1950, Buiiuel
in the heroic strains of the Brahms. Like the virtually disappeared from view. He worked
music in L'Age d'Or-bits of Mendelssohn, in Hollywood for a bit, supposedly on the
Beethoven, Schubert, and Wagner, made fur- script of The Beast with Five Fingers, and at
10 BUNUEL

the Museum of Modern Art in New York. After ters find shelter there. It is Meche's natural
the war, he went to hlexico, where he was home and the place in which Ochitos can drink
taken up by Oscar Dancigers for reputed pot- spontaneously from the teat of a donkey. Yet,
boilers like Gran Casino (1947) and El Gran it is not just a place of shelter. Meche's grand-
Ca1az;era (1949).20 After these, Dancigers al- father gets angry there, and of course, her
lowed him almost total freedom with Los 0lz;i- brother is as much of the place as she is.
dados, which won him the director's prize at Finally, while seeking the expected shelter,
Cannes in 1950-"the only film I am respon- Pedro is brutally killed there and then dis-
sible for since Land Witlcout Bread," as Bufiuel posed of as rubbish. Even this gentler atmos-
said.?l phere is not inviolate.
There can be no finer account of this film In a casual way, without formal emphasis,
than that offered by Alan Love11 in his little- the characters tend to be associated with dif-
known pamphlet, Anarchist Cinema.?? ferent kinds of animals. While still young in
The one new moral factor in Los Olvidados violence and attempting to resist it, Pedro is
that was not present in Buiiuel's three first films associated with young chickens, unlike the
in the same structural way is the factor of Blind Man who is most frequently associated
innocence. In fact, we could almost establish with the hostile and vindictive cock. Yet even
a hierarchy of innocence and vulnerability in here, there are no simple contrasts. The Blind
the film, moving towards cruelty and violence, Man is also the one who handles the curative
motivated by the urge to destroy. The quality dove. In this superstitious society, he is re-
that shifts along this spectrum is, of course, ceived as a healer, grotesquely ironic though
the quality of love-not quite the Christian this may seem. For in his admiration for the
agape but more like the simple physical tender- dictator Porfirio Diaz, in his home among the
ness, the habit of affection, that characterizes steel girders-"an exact symbol of the violence
Bergman's early films and which provides such and anonymity of life in a large modern city"'3
a strong element of affirmation in them. In -even in his blindness and hence his isolation
Bufiuel, however (and here I disagree some- from the physical appearance of things, the
what with Alan Lovell's refutation of the pessi- Blind hlan represents all that is most reaction-
mism of the film), things are not quite that ary in contemporary society. Looking forward
simple, not so schematic. to both the Captain and to Joseph in Diary of
Ochitos, Meche, Pedro, Pedro's mother, Jaibo, a Chambermaid, he believes in violence as a
the Blind Man-these characters represent a creed. "One less," he cries out in enraged de-
crescendo of violence in the film, of the de- light as Jaibo is shot down. "They should all
structive forces of society. Yet, as with the be killed at birth." This is followed by a des-
Hurdanos, they are all seen as part of the same perate sequence that depicts the fruits of such
insistently physical world. It is a barren, shel- a philosophy: the gentle hIeche dumping the
terless place of poverty and hardship where slaughtered Pedro onto the rubbish heap, shun-
the people in it are driven into violence by ning involvement.
the insistent need to survive. The cocks and In Los Olvidados, the characters are disturb-
chickens, the gentler farmyard animals, the in- ingly interdependent, good and evil distributed
numerable stray dogs that litter the film-these in varying proportions throughout them all.
are all part of the same mendicant, animal Meche, although gentle, is also provocative
world, a confirmation of its physicality. The (like Pedro's mother, with her legs) and she
characters are seen as wholesome in proportion is prepared to sell her kisses. Even Ochitos is
to the degree that they share the gentleness tempted to rise to violence, both with Jaibo
of the more domesticated animals. Thus, we and then with the Blind Man, and may well
have the comparative haven of the stable, with have to if he is to survive. All the clubbings
whatever associations you will. All the charac- in the film, whether of Julian, the chickens, or
BUNUEL 11

Pedro, are shot in the same way. The violence easy. Whether in Mexico or in France, it ap-
is directly recorded without editorial insistence pears he had little control over the projects he
but with a documentary kind of matter-of- was offered. My own memory of all the films
factness. Thus the title-The Lost Ones-refers made during this period is one of seriously
to them all. marred films of considerable interest. Whether
Structurally, however, there are some prob- they are marred by thundering implausibilities
lems in the film, problems acutely analyzed by (Susanu, Ensayo de u11Crimen), crabbed plots
Alan Lovell. First of all, we have the break- (El, and nearly all of the French stuff) or less
down of causality in the Pedro/Jaibo relation- than indifferent acting (especially The Young
ship, the intrusion of coincidence that gives One), they seem to be films that are less in-
this part of the film an Oliver Twist kind of teresting in themselves, each one separately,
sentimentality, an added charge of pathos which than they are either as interesting facets of the
is the very feeling that Bufiuel supposedly is complete Bufiuel or for the inescapable power
most against. Secondly, there is the corrective- of individual moments-their raison d'ktre, I've
farm sequence with its moralizing quality and always felt, and t h e real source of their
all that it implies. strength.24 Whatever we think of the entire
It would be convenient to assume that this films, after we've seen El we will remember
farm sequence was imposed upon the film, but Francisco alone on the stairs in his despair or
I'm not too sure. The clearest point about it is preparing his needle and thread to enter his
its isolation and its irrelevance to the world out- wife's room; and after Erwayo de un Crimen,
side. Once away from its protection (implausi- we will remember Archibaldo's fascination with
bly or not), Pedro is lost. Like Bufiuel's islands the mannikin's face melting and remember that
in both Robinson Crusoe and Tlze Young One, when he first saw Lavinia, she was surrounded
as Frkdkric Grange has said, the farm "repre- by flames. Nevertheless, I should say that each
sents a utopia with regards to a reality that it time I've re-seen (for example) The Young One,
is incapable of changing." Finally, as we scru- I've become less conscious of the stilted way
tinize the film and admire the delicacy of its that many of the lines are delivered and more
interwoven network of shared responsibilities aware of the essential delicacy of presentation
-even the association of Ochitos (=Big Eyes) of the film's view of life. Phenomenologically,
and the Blind Man is troubling in the extreme- it is really as if the "faults" become absorbed
finally, we might ask, as with Land Without by the qualities, so intermingled they both
Bread, what is our relation to all this? What are seem to be. At this stage, therefore, anything
the qualities in life that might help us to en- said about these films must be both tentative
dure? Still not an easy question to answer. and provisional. The films will have to be made
more available before we'll be sure about the
In spite of the artistic success of Los Oluidados, e!usive question of their quality.
for the next eight years Bufiuel's career was not Thinking about them, however, the ones I
most remember seem to go in pairs. Both
Susana (1950) and El Bruto (1952) explore the
disruptive effect that sexual passion can have
upon a controlled community. In fact, in a
way that carries on from Los Oluidados, El
Brufo really dramatizes the conflict between
gentle love and erotic passion, with the brutal
defeat of the former. El and Archibaldo (=En-
sayo de un Crimen) both deal with the inner
plight of men locked within themselves25 Both
Francisco and Archibaldo are imprisoned with-

Los OLVZDADOS
12 BUNUEL

in their own fantasies. They are both essentially greater understanding of the physical realities
impotent and so are reduced to their private of life. He has broken away from his inherited
rituals of a surrealist absurdity and concentra- concepts of a master/servant relationship into
tion. By the end of the films, Francisco is con- an awareness of what human contact might
fined to a kind of religious madness, zigzagging entail. Similarly in The Yowtg One, through
his life away in a monastery; while Archibaldo his contact with little Evie, Miller has come to
(however implausibly) has been set free from re-examine not only his own racial prejudices
himself. Nevertheless, it is interesting to ob- but his whole way of thinking about life, about
serve how Archibaldo, once he has destroyed the supposedly clear-cut categories of good and
the symbol of his mother's hold over him (and evil. If The Young One must still be considered
as the music box sinks into the river, the water a " b a d film by conventional standards, then
bubbles up over it as if it were human!), he is it is one of the most subtle, most challenging,
pleased to let a preying mantis live that he and most distinguished bad films ever made.27
finds on the trunk of a tree on his way to meet In all the French films made at this t i m e
his girl. Unlike poor Modot in L'Age d'Or, he Cela S'Appelle I'aurore (1955), La Mort en ce
is now at peace with nature and with the world. jardin (1950), and La FiBvre monte ~3 El Pao
But most interesting of these films are the (1959)-FrBdBric Grange suggests that their
two in English, The Adventures of Robinson greater social quality, their greater involvement
Crusoe (1952) and The Yout&gOne (1960). Not with political corruption, is accompanied by
only are they both set on islands-like the farm an increasing degree of abstraction from physi-
in Los Oluidados, isolated worlds away from cal reality that robs the films of their poten-
the corruptions of organized society-but also, tially most Bufiuelian q ~ a l i t y . ~Certainly
s the
they really do appear to be Buiiuel's most posi- sense of slight involvement even in La Mort en
tive films. By the end of both of them, more ce jardin-to go for what is in many ways the
plausibly than in Archibaldo, something has best of them-would seem to lend support to
been achieved, some human qualities have pre- this general claim. It is as if Bufiuel, on the
vailed. "I've never liked the novel but I love political level, simply couldn't care or found
the character," Bufiuel has said of Robinson he was unable to believe. The perfunctory
C r ~ s o e ; ~and
6 by the end of his film, through quality of these films seems to suggest a kind
Friday, Crusoe has succeeded in coming to a of artistic fatigue.
BUNUEL

I love Nazarin because it is a film that allowed me a caballero who sets him free. Yet, grotesquely,
to express certain things I care about. But I don't paradoxically, surrealistically, Ujo is the most
believe I denied or abjured anything. . . . I am affirmative figure in all of Buiiuel, the most
still an atheist, thank G0d.~9 complete incarnation of agape, of Christian
I am very much attached to Nazarin. He is a priest. love. His acceptance of the world, of its physi-
He could as well be a hairdresser or a waiter. What cal reality, obviously forced upon him by the
interests me about him is that he stands by his ideas, hapless shape of his own body, is total and
that these ideas are inacceptable to society at large, untinged by self-deception. "You're ugly, you're
and that after his adventures with rostitutes, a whore, but I love YOU,"he sa s to Andara.
thieves, and so forth, they lead him to geing irre- Y

"What a kick! Were you angry! ' he later ex-

vocably damned by the prevailing social order .. .30 claims at her cell window quite spontaneously,
Nazarin (1958) was an exception and, in ar- as he comes to re-accept her. There is scarcely
tistic terms, marks yet a new beginning. Like any question here of forgiveness in the formally
the best of Buiiuel, the film would repay a Christian sense of the word, of turning the
close analysis, a minute examination of its in- other cheek-which, finally, Nazarin finds it
dividual effects; but more briefly here, we hard to do when he too is kicked about in his
could perhaps best define its moral structure cell. Ujo simply accepts the event as he accepts
by looking at the characterization of three dif- the violence and physicality of existence.
ferent men. Whenever we see Ujo, he is helping people-
First of all, there is Pinto, the caballero. With offering fruit to the female prisoners and the
his spurs and whip, he is obviously a develop- child, physical projections of his "love," of his
ment of the Jesus figure in Susana, but he is intensely real human concern. So too his final
related to other Buiiuel characters as well. In offering of the peach to Andara, his arm fully
this harsh Mexico of poverty and authority, extended in his effort to reach up to her, his
the Mexico of Porfirio Diaz that was recalled look of extreme pleasure and then his embar-
with such enthusiasm by the Blind Man in Los rassed turning away. The language of criticism
Olvidados, Pinto is obviously strong. Like Berg- always falters with such a moment in the
man's Squire in The Seventh Seal, Pinto ac- cinema, for the richness of possible feeling
cepts the physicality of life for what it is and (both in Ujo and in ourselves) is impossible to
acts accordingly. He knows about horses and, describe. But it is a most affirmative gesture,
as the scene by the fountain would imply, he made disturbingly pathetic as he then hobbles
knows how to subdue the devils that are tor- after her, unable to keep up.
menting Beatrix. He moves deliberately and Just as the surrealists at their most engaged
noisily from place to place, the sound of his set out to challenge the nature of matter and
spurs always accompanying his movements. He the meaning of art and life, so Ujo challenges
is obviously a positive force in the film, an our sentimental notions of virtue and charity,
aspect of whatever social stability there might of moral goodness in an authoritarian world.
have been at such a time; but to what extent Although with our conscious selves we claim
he actually endorses the values of that world, to know better, we still tend to equate virtue
a rigid feudal world held in place by force, with beauty of some kind. The Keatsian fal-
and thus looks forward to both Joseph and the lacy persists in its attractiveness. Through Ujo,
Captain in Diary of a Chambermaid, is some- Buiiuel will not let us do this; and I have
thing that we'll have to decide. found it extraordinary how few critics have
On the other hand, we have Ujo, the dwarf. even noticed the presence of Ujo in the film,
A physically grotesque and absurdly vulnerable let alone paid tribute to the moral role he
creature, when we first see him strung up in plays.31
a tree, we realize that he is dependent on the Between the two extremes of Pinto and Ujo
Pintos of this society to keep him alive. It is walks Nazarin-we could really say, looking
14 BUNUEL

neither to the left nor right. For it is of the es- Like Los Olvidados, Nazarin's world is an
sence of Nazarin that, until the end of the film, intensely physical one, punctuated throughout
he really notices nothing about the world he by animal sights and sounds. And this world
inhabits, certainly nothing of its violence and remains unaffected by anything that Nazarin
its physicality. If he is a man who stands by can do: the woman dying of the plague wants
his ideas (as Buiiuel has said that he is), these not heaven but Juan; Beatrix's devils are her
ideas have not been derived from an observa- sexual and emotional needs; and Andara re-
tion of the real world. In this sense, he is as mains unrepentant and without "charity" to
much a prisoner of his own self-delusions as the end. "May all your children be still-born
Francisco in El or the hero of Archibaldo. If and may you choke on your own pus!" These
he is a Christian striving to live a thoroughly are the last words we hear from her, directed
good life of self-denial and of spiritual ideals, against the fat thief. It is an intensely physical
he is a textbook Christian about whom, con- curse.
stantly, we sense there is something wrong. It is the thin thief who, while contriving to
Obviously he is self-denying (we scarcely rob Nazarin, begins to bring about his inner
ever see him eat), and he does try to reject the regeneration. 'Your life is wholly good and
accusations of sainthood that superstitious peo- mine is wholly bad but what has either of us
ple keep thrusting upon him; yet nothing in accomplished?" When this question is put to
his life works out as he might wish. Something him, Nazarin-here looking most deliberately
seems odd. And is it really the society that will like a classic Rembrandt Christ-is for the first
not accept him (again, as Buiiuel has claimed), time in the film directly affected by something
or is there something in himself that brings outside himself. Up to this point in the film,
about rejection? For not only is he ineffectual he has always had an appropriate homily ready
in everything he tries to do-indeed, often de- as an answer, but this question brings about his
structive, unleashing passions in others-but silence.
there is the sense of some discrepancy in the The final stage is achieved when he is alone
man himself (like the window that serves as a on the road. It has always seemed to me that
door for his room-just a tinge of the old sur- it is less the offer of the pineapple that moves
realist absurdity, of the cow in the bed). him so deeply than the fact that the woman
Most simply, most conventionally, it could blesses him. It is the blessing, I feel, from a
be seen as a matter of spiritual pride. He sees simple peasant woman that he really cannot
himself as above the petty trivialities of the accept and which he three times refuses. With
rest of the world and is determined to stay the drums referring back to Modot's defeated
there. He rejects the world of the flesh with rage in L'Age d'Or and beyond that to the
such insistent thoroughness that he is unable Easter ceremonies at Calanda, the ending is
to know what it is all about. So he is useless to affirmative in a way, as if Nazarin has at last
everyone. come to accevt his own frail humanitv. his own
need to be bfessed. But he passes ou( bf frame.
Where will that road lead? Even if he has been
brought to some point of self-awareness, what
will now be his role in the world? Again we
have the question, what does Buiiuel believe?

If I have dwelt in some detail with the prob-

lems of Nazarin, it is because I feel that it is
the film that most successfully holds in balance
these problems of personal belief, not in any
kind of metaphysical benevolent Patron but in
BUNUEL

the relationship between good and evil in the

world. What qualities in life does Bufiuel be-
lieve will survive? This is again the question
asked implicitly by V i r i d i ~ n a . 3 ~
When Viridiana first burst upon the world
in 1961, if it had been seen in the light of the
more reticent Nazarin, the response to its ap-
parent extravagances might well have been
more subdued. While stylistically in some ways
very different-Viridianu is so much more exu-
berant, more exciting technically, and displays
a denser observation of the variety of human
life-thematically the films are very much the
same. Whether it's Don Jaime in his stately Surrealist to the core of himself, he simply pre-
home surrounded by the artifacts of a culture sents this situation and lets us make of it what
somewhat at odds with the urgency of his pri- we may, deceiving ourselves if we will.
vate needs, or Viridiana in her convent, Viridi- For at the end of Viridianu, what in fact have
ana depicts the intrusion into these too private we? She has moved on in the direction of
and self-deceiving worlds of the brute facts of reality, and there is something radiant and
reality. In some ways Viridiana is a more posi- affirmative even about her timidity at the end.
tive figure than Nazarin-certainly Bufiuel con- After her rape, like Nazarin, she is silent and
stantly associates her with images of great unsure of herself and so, we might feel, more
beauty-yet finally, she is not much more suc- ready to receive life. And yet what kind of life
cessful. The ending of ViTiclianu is just as tenta- is there for her to receive? A me'nage-d-trois
tive and just as disturbing as the ending of with Jorge and the long-suffering Ramona?
Nazarin. Certainly, in an inward way, with her What will she be able to achieve with that?
crown of thorns burnt and her hair now let Jorge represents a positive spirit in the film.
loose, Viridiana has achieved some acceptance A bastard heir to this great estate, he feels no
of the physicalities of her own life. Yet what is obligation to respect any of the past, unlike
the world she is moving into? With this increase Ramona who keeps him from merely diddling
in self-knowledge, what role now will she be with his father's cherished organ. Though no
able to play? great philanthropist, he is nevertheless capable
Always the same question to which there of isolated acts of kindness when a problem is
can be no cheerful answer, although Buiiuel brought to his attention. He sets one dog free
takes pains to give us the feeling of something that is tied to a cart, without much worrying
open at the end. Yet the more I contemplate his about all the other dogs.
work, especially with the unambiguous defeat His attitude to love-making is probably much
of all decent impulses represented by D i a y of the same-casual and efficient; but before he
a Chambermaid, the more I feel that there is pounces on her, he inspects Ramona's teeth in
really no ambiguity about the end of these a way that makes us remember Pinto and his
films. Buiiuel simply shows us that there are horse. He believes in the future and has big
certainly manifestations of individual tender- plans for the great estate; yet, while we see
ness and through these some measure of in- many scenes of energetic activity, intercut with
dividual salvation still possible in the world; Viridiana and her beggars serene beneath the
but outside the individual, the forces of dark- almond trees, we see nothing that is built. Nor
ness await us, for there is nothing we can do. for all the talk about points and plugs, do we
His supposed ambiguity is more frequently his have any electricity by the end. The Bach and
unwillingness to draw this bleak conclusion. Mozart and the Hallelujah chorus have been
16 BUNUEL

replaced by "Shake your cares away," an un- best in the early days, with both Los Olvidados
distinguished pop song which may have, in and Nazarin, the films employ the simplest of
comparison, "a certain humanity" as Alan Love11 technical means-a fact that can make them
has argued, but it is not very encouraging. AS dull to watch for someone not attuned to
the camera pulls back from Viridiana playing Buiiuel's view of life. But both Viridiana and
cards with Jorge and Ramona, seeming more The Extemninating Angel represent a change
and more imprisoned in that little room, we do from this apparent carelessness; and perhaps
indeed see that order has been restored after owing to the French crew and the prosperous
the beggars' orgy but the clutter of the place production conditions, The Diary of a Cham-
is no different than in Don Jaime's day. Though bermaid is his most expertly executed film.
no conclusions are drawn, the implication would So much do I admire every detail of the
seem to be very black indeed-and almost in- film and so appropriate is each detail to the
distinguishable from the ending of L'Age &Or. significance of the whole, it is difficult for me
At the center of the finest aspirations of our not to launch into a full-scale analvsis which.
i

culture (this film would seem to be saying), for the sake of space, I must resist. So once
with all our Bach and Mozart, there is a suicidal again, perhaps too schematically, we can look
sexual repression that struggles to get free. If at certain details, the most telling features of
we free ourselves from this repression, then the form. When CBlestine (Jeanne Moreau)
the culture seems to go as well and we're left first arrives at the railway station and asks the
with the feeble suggestion that we should coachman Joseph if it is far to the priory,
shake our cares away. Meanwhile, outside these he replies: "You'll find out-Vous le verrez
disturbingly matters, these insistent bien." This is what she finds.33
questions of personal salvation, there is the First of all, within the wintry seclusion of
church in its solidity, organized and impene- the place, there is the Master, Monteil, who al-
trable, and its opposite pole, the poor beggars ways goes out shooting. Denied by his wife
-like the bandits in L'Age &Or, in revolt (except for "certain caresses"!), he is reduced
against the world and amongst themselves but to seducing chambermaids and with his gun
wythout a purpose. It is not an encouraging destroying things, idicting upon the outside
view of the world. world his anger and frustrations. There is also
Madame Monteil whose private life centers
After the comparative light relief of The Ex- around a locked-up ritual of flasks and tubes
terminuting Angel (1962), a film in which he of the most hygienic kind, an aspect (we as-
seems to b e playing with merely an aspect of sume) of her compulsive need to stay clean.
his total vision, a film of some wit, I sup- Intercourse with her husband causes her too
pose, but not much insight, Buiiuel returned much pain, and the first question she asks
to France with all the resources of his late CBlestine is concerned with her cleanliness. Un-
maturity to make what in many ways is the like her husband, Madame Monteil preserves
most astonishing film of his career. Also, as if things. She wants every detail in the house to
to compensate for the indifference of his French remain exactly as it is. In collusion with her
films in the fifties, Buiiuel has contrived to father, she demands that no shoes ever be
make The Diary of a Chambermaid (1964) his worn in the salon except by her father, "For
most accomplished film as well. Bufiuel has he is always spotless."
never been that interested in the techniques When we first see the father, Old Rabour,
of the cinema. Again true to his surrealist in- he is taking pains to blow clean little Claire's
heritance, he has been less concerned with the nose and complains about his son-in-law's un-
formal perfection of his presentation than with shaven state. His entire life is lived as one
the interiority of what is being said. At his removed from reality. For the most part, we
BUNUEL

see him locked up in his room with his post- for what she thinks will be the safest bet. As
cards of young women and his cabinet of the film ends, we can see she has made a
women's shoes. He is a gentleman of the old mistake. She sits on her bed, impatient with
sort, as Marianne says; and so he is. He is Mauger's unctuousness (even though he talks
urbane and civilized and extremely courteous of money), biting her little finger as she recog-
to CBlestine, though he calls her Marie since nizes her fate. It might seem like punishment
to him all chambermaids are the same. CBles- of a kind, having made such a choice. But there
tine is his one contact with the physical world. is no sense of divine retribution. The dice have
She models his boots, lets her calf be gently simply rolled the wrong way.34
fondled, and reads to him passages of his fa- Although a thoroughgoing opportunist of the
vorite author, Huysmans (from whom Buiiuel most unscrupulous kind, CBlestine has some
has selected the most telling bits-"il n'existe redeeming features. In this world of moral sick-
plus de substance saine . . ."). In the old-world ness that Buiiuel presents to us, she is compara-
style, he maintains a real gentleness; for like tively well. In this way, like Joseph, her cyni-
Don Jaime his dissatisfactions are inflicted upon cism makes her strong. She accepts things that
himself. And like Don Jaime, this inward-turn- happen to her, even the kinky insistences of
ing quality leads to a troubled death. old Rabour. Which is to say she is respectful
Next door there is Captain Mauger, FBlicien of kindness (for she is harsh with Monteil) and
Mauger, a professional man of force whose ca- discreet in her verbal fidelity to her friends (she
reer as a soldier gives him status in the society defends Rose to Mauger). Her most decent im-
no matter how he actually behaves. (We might pulse springs from her response to little Claire,
remember Modot in L'Age d'Or who, once he whose brutal murder she would have done any-
has presented his credentials to the men who thing to avenge. But even here, decency is
are restraining him, is allowed to attack a flouted and Joseph is set free. The Diary of a
blind man with apparent impunity.) Mauger's Chambermaid is a film that celebrates the
life is filled with a petty war he is privately triumph of evil over the world of good inten-
waging on his neighbor, with no apparent rea- tions. It is Bufiuel's most unambiguous film,
son since it is made up by the end. He lives and thus the answer to all the questions that
in a common-law alliance with his housekeeper, have been raised before.
Rose; after twelve years he decides to send her Because of the presence of Ochitos and to
packing so that he can be free to approach a lesser extent Meche, one could feel in Los
Cklestine. With the exception of Cklestine, who Olvidados that gentleness and goodness might
is obviously his match, he thinks of woman as stand a chance.3j But in the grim light of
creatures who serve him, as creatures to clean Chambermaid, even this faint glimmer of hope
his boots. In the Bufiuel galaxy, this unites him seems to be a self-deception. If Pedro's mother
with Jorge and contrasts him with Rabour who washes her legs in a way that recalls Meche,
takes a strange delight in reversing this man/ then we might from this parallel feel that
servant relationship. Meche's course in life is not too promising.
Close by, there is ''la petite Claire"-a watery- Similarly, though Ochitos in his considerate-
eyed, full-lipped little creature who is so pro- ness is nicely contrasted with the fascist vio-
vocative that Joseph cannot look at her. To lence of the Blind Man, we have seen that
his sadistic mind, she must seem as moistly twice in the film he has been ready to rise
physical as the snails she is so fond of. And of to violence himself-as he will probably have
course, most central in this household is Joseph, to do if he is to survive. Thus by this declen-
a man too complex for any cameo. sion there is the feeling that Ochitos might
Into this world comes CBlestine, creating de- have to be less wide-eyed in relation to exist-
sire in every man she meets but holding out ence if he is going to stay alive. For the Blind
Man has stumbled through.
In Chambemnaid, the only ambiguity is the
uncertainty of what Bufiuel might feel for his
two principal characters-especially for Joseph.
The killing of Claire is immediately followed
by a brief autumnal evening scene, with Joseph
wheeling a wheelbarow. Then a scene in the
kitchen where the maids are asking Cklestine
why she has returned to the house, to which
she gives the evasive answer-"beeause."s6 Then
the scene by the bonfire at night with Joseph
raking the leaves. "You are like me . . . way
down deep," he says to her, and we know that
this is true; just as we know that the "salaud"
she scribbles on the table after she has turned
Joseph over to the police applies both to her-
self and to him. It is the old story of the thief
to catch the thief, of combatting evil with more ness seem that much more grim.
evil; except that in this case it doesn't work Perhaps it was the defeat of the Republicans
and Joseph is set free. in the Spanish Civil War; perhaps it has been
The ambiguity of attitude springs from the Buiiuel's hard and (one assumes) lonely life;38
scenes of sensual softness that surrounds Claire's perhaps it is just the way he sees things that
murder and that give the whole film a troubling makes his world so without a hope for the
aesthetic lift. We are back to the Dali anec- eventual triumph of the gentlest impulses in
dote again, with its psychopathic sensibility. mankind. And even though we might strive to
There is no moral judgment made in this film see things differently, Buiiuel's vision is not
about the central characters because Bufiuel an easy one to disagree with. Whatever Simon
must recognize that in such a world such char- of the Desert or now La Belle Epoque might
acters are strong. If Cklestine and Joseph genu- have in store for us, it is doubtful if they will
inely admire one another, Buiiuel would seem offer a more positive view of the world.
to a large degree also to admire them. Often in Bufiuel we experience great tender-
The film ends with a gag, as if like L'Age ness; but almost constantly in his films it
$Or in the effort to set us free. Joseph has meets with defeat. As an emblem of his world,
realized his desire and taken that cafe in Cher- we might remember the deformed Ujo, as if
bourg with a woman to whore for him. He has even genuine goodness must be achieved at a
allied himself with the most reactionary forces terrible price; or we might remember Don
of the Action Frangaise; and, of course, the Jaime as he writes out his will, the resigned
film would seem to imply, the future is on his smile on his face as he makes the final dadaist
side. As the demonstrators march past the cafe surrender to the powers of darkness, as if his
with its Picon advertisement, the last syllable attempt to achieve goodness has been the big-
of which remains on the screen throughout the gest joke of all.
sequence, Joseph starts shouting "Vive Chi-
appe" which the others then take With
its absurd jumpcuts and the tilt upwards to
the thunder and lightning, this sequence is to- NOTES
tally out of style with the rest of the film; 1. See Dada: art G anti-art, by Hans Richter and
yet the very unrelatedness of this intensely Sumalbm, by Patrick Waldberg (both Lon-
personal joke makes the film's pervasive grim- don: Thames & Hudson, 1965).
 2. Surrealism, by Julien Levy. (New York: Black 5 Caledonian Rd., London, K.4. 1962) and
Sun Press, 1936), p. 9. through the BFI.
3. From the Introduction to the Penguin Book of 23. Ibid., p. 23.
French Verse (4). 24. Pace, Tom Milne (Sight G Sound, Winter 19651
4. The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, b y Salvador 66) who does a disservice, it seems to me, by
Dali. (London: Vision Press Ltd., 1948), p. 11. dealing with these lesser-known films in isola-
5. See Richter (op. cit.), p. 43. tion and finding most of them to be "master-
6. See Waldberg (op. cit.), p. 16. ~ieces,"a disservice both to Buiiuel and to our
7 . Luis Buiiuel: an Introduction, by Ado Kyrou. critical intelligence.
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1963), p. 114. 25. For a comparison of these two films, see Grange
8. Ibid., p. 14. (op. cit.), p. 64 f f .
9. Buiiuel's son, Juan-Luis, has now made a 22- 26. Buache (op. cit.), p. 51.
min, documentary on this drumming cere- 27. For a full and persuasive analysis, see Alan
mony-Cahnda, 1966. Lovell (op. cit.), pp. 28-34.
10. In Luis Buiiuel, ed. b y Michel Esthye (Etudes 28. P. 103 f f .
CinCmatographiques, Nos. 2Ck21, 22-23, Hiver 29. Kyrou (op. cit.), p. 120.
1962-63), p. 11 ff., Francisco Rabal relates how 30. Ibid., p. 127.
once in hlexico, when Bufiuel discovered that 31. First prize for gross insensitivity goes to Tom
there were rats in his house, he would rather Milne for his Monthly Film Bulletin review,
catch them in a cage in order to set them free Oct. 1963, p. 141. He describes the film as "a
in an open field than have to kill them. See pure, devastating masterpiece of atheism" and
also his sister Conchita's memoirs in Positif, refers to Ujo as "the lewd and ugly dwarf who,
No. 42, Nov. 1961. simply because he wants her body, shows a
11. From Estkve (op. cit.), p. 193. charity to Andara which Nazario . . . can never
12. For example, see any o f the pieces i n Sight G match . . ."
Sound, especially David Robinson's "Thank 32. Again, see Alan Lovell, pp. 34-38.
God I'm still an atheist" (Summer '62, p. 116 33. For a most thorough account of this film, see
ff.) and T o m Milne's "The Mexican Bufiuel" Grange again, p. 152 f f . See also, of course, the
(Winter 1%5/66, p. 36 ff.). published script in L'Avant-Scdne, No. 36, 15
13. Cinema Eye, Cinema Ear (London: Methuen, avril 1964.
1964), p. 85. 34. For a total miscomprehension, see again Tom
14. Luis Buiiuel, supposedly by Carlos Rebolledo Milne's "The Two Chambermaids" in Sight cL
but all but the last section o f which is by Sound, Aut. 1964, p. 177: ". . . and when we
FrCdCric Grange, the best all-round study of his last see CClestine comfortably breakfasting in
work. (Paris: Editions Universitaires, 1964). See bed . . ." This is all he has to say of this scene
p. 15 f f . and he finds the film a failure.
15. In Luis Bufiuel, b y Freddy Buache. (Premier 35. As Alan Lovell has argued (op. cit.), p. 26.
Plan #33, 1964). 36. By way of small digression, we could note the
16. See Pierre Renaud's analysis in Esthve (op, cit.) troubling efficacy o f the evaded question that
p. 147 f f . occurs at least twice in this film at crucial mo-
17. Op. cit., p. 93. ments. "Pourquoi?" which is followed simply
18. For example, see Henry Miller's classic essay by "Parceque" in a way that cannot help but
from The Cosmological Eye (New York: New recall Godard but which here seems most effec-
Directions, 1939). tively used to suggest the breakdown of causal-
19. Jean SBmoluC in Esthve (op. cit.), p. 172. ity in this world of moral nihilism.
20. For a description o f these little-known films (if 37. Tom Milne is helpful about the facts (op. cit.),
you can understand it, whether in French or p. 171: It seems that Chiappe was one of the
English), see "The Angel & the Beast" by Jean- key men responsible for the banning of L'Age
AndrC Fieschi, in Cahiers du Cindma in Eng- d'Or.
lish, No. 4 , 1966. 38. For an informative and generally helpful article
21. See the filmography compiled b y Rufus Segar about Buiiuel's Spanish background, see J . F.
in Anarchy 6, pp. 183-84. Aranda's two-part piece in Films G Filming,
22. Anarchist Cinema, by Alan Lovell (Peace News, Oct. 1961 and Nov. 1961.