Ben Burr

Film 471

Final Paper

The films of Luis Bunuel are probably the most interesting films of any

quasi-mainstream filmmaker in the history of cinema. Every film has its special

qualities to it, but as a filmmaker overall Bunuel has his own styles and themes

that make any of his films identifiable to even a moderately knowledgeable

cinema-goer. And it’s these themes especially that set a Bunuel film apart from

everyone else. To paraphrase Ingmar Bergman, “What’s the point of making a

film if you don’t make a statement with it?” Bunuel made a statement with every

film he made, although some films, like Tristana, have Bunuel’s societal critiques

more hidden than The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, for instance.

Spanish filmmakers, at least the two most prominent Spanish filmmakers

of the 20th century (Bunuel and Pedro Almodovar), seem to have a lot to say

because of the oppressive nature of the country and its culture. Two of themes

that these two filmmakers have in common are a distain for organized religion,

namely the Catholic Church, and the hierarchical class system that seems to be

especially prevalent in Spain. They both touch on issues of sexual abuse by the

Church and they both show the upper class in a less than favorable light. Bunuel

constantly attacks the notion of religion, and the notion of God in many of his

films, from Viridiana to The Phantom of Liberty, but no attacks are as clear as

they are in Simon of the Desert and The Milky Way. Bunuel had a very religion-
filled education and it would turn out that that education would be the basis for

his distain for religion and his main way of fighting back at religion. In Simon of

the Desert, Bunuel seems to pull the mask off of a “saint” and shows that,

although you may devote your life to God, it does not necessarily make you a

good person. While Simon does pray that the thief’s hands are restored and he

blesses many people and prays for many people, he completely blows off his

mother, which is in direct contradiction of the “honor thy father and mother”

commandment. And on a slightly different religious theme, Bunuel also seems to

be commenting on the impossibility of sainthood, an idea he explored in Viridiana

and Nazarin a few years earlier. In Viridiana, he takes a woman from almost

becoming a nun, to being raped and implying a threesome between her, her

cousin and his mistress. In Simon of the Desert, he has Simon being tempted by

the devil numerous times but in Simon’s time period, he resists. When Simon and

the devil go into the future, the temptations are surrounding him and there is no

possible way to avoid them. Bunuel seems to be saying that you can live in this

modern world, but there is no way to survive it. This is also hinted at by the name

of the dance in the club, “Radioactive Flesh.”

With The Milky Way, Bunuel calls upon his knowledge of religion (and he

and his co-writer also did a great deal of research) to take the Church’s own

words and turn them against them. The main plot of the film was to show heretics

over the ages and what it did was show the hypocrisy of the Church through the

ages. This is a brilliant move on his part because it deflects the blame off of him.

The Church could attack him by saying that he is attacking the Church and he is
desecrating the foundation of the Church but now they cannot because it is the

words from that Church that are doing the desecrating.

The theme of social class is prominent in most of Bunuel’s films, if not all

of them. His later films, especially The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, are

either centered on the concept that the high society or ruling class of a culture

are aloof to the world around them. The easiest example to pull from his works

would be from Discreet Charm. The bourgeoisie in the film are aimless and the

only real cares that they have in the world are smuggling drugs and having a

dinner together. The most powerful reoccurring scene in the film is where the

group of friends are simply walking down a road in the middle of nowhere. This

simple scene is the heart of Bunuel. He is able to summarize the entire film in

that one image. But while Discreet Charm is the most noticeable example of his

distain for these people, his most interesting exploration of this subject is in Belle

de jour.

Belle de jour is my favorite Bunuel film because it seems to be the

simplest and yet one of the most complex. The film centers for the most part on

one character, with only a handful of secondary characters, only three of which

seem to have any real development. Mainly, the other characters are there to

reveal more about Belle. This is really the only Bunuel film that I have seen that I

would feel safe labeling as a character study (Tristana would come in as a close

second). Bunuel takes an upper class housewife and he turns her into a

masochistic prostitute. He makes the bourgeois lifestyle seem so empty and so

immoral. And then he shows that that lifestyle is actually the root of most evil, if
not all evil. It is the transformation that takes place through the entire film that is

so interesting. Bunuel also adds in quick flashbacks that give hints to impropriety

during Belle’s childhood. Catherine Deneuve did an outstanding job going from

icy to masochistic and the other reason for this, her acting talent being the first, is

because Bunuel crafts his scripts so well. It is a taboo subject that is treated

rather subtly by Bunuel. He understood that silence, and this film is full of it, can

convey a message that ten pages of dialogue could not.

Belle de jour is also one of his best uses of dreams. In this film, she has

dreams that seem to reveal a hidden part of her personality, rather than just

having dreams that may relate to the film, and may say something about the

character. While the ending of the film is up to heavy interpretation, there are a

few dreams that really reveal what Belle is inside. The film opens with a dream,

what I would consider a rape fantasy, which helps to unveil her masochistic side.

In a second dream, she is tied to a tree (a sign of oppression) and is having mud

thrown in her face while being called names by her husband and his friend. This,

as well as the first dream, tend to give the feeling that Belle has been oppressed

sexually her entire life, probably stemming from actions taken by her father while

she was a child, and now that she is a prostitute, she’s finally freeing herself of

this oppression. Although it seems the latter dream is representing a struggle

between her sexual desires and the norms presented by society of how a

housewife should act, hence the name-calling and mud-slinging. A third intriguing

dream as has Belle being tied to a tree but this time being shot with a rifle. This

of course could mean many things, but it seems that it could represent either the
strong feeling of guilt that she is feeling, or more likely, it represents the death of

all of her oppression.

Being a surrealist at heart, and having an affinity for dreams and

imagination, Bunuel became the master of dreams. His Mexican films from the

1950s seemed to be more surreal and less about dreams. There are surreal

moments in Los Olvidados, The Exterminating Angel, Simon of the Desert and

Viridiana; but they do not rely on dreams. His later, internationally-made films

seem to rely almost equally on dreams and surrealism, if not more on dreams.

Surrealism is barely seen in cinema today, only one major example from

Almodovar’s work stands out, the scene with the little girl with magical powers

from What Have I Done To Deserve This?. Bunuel’s later films, mainly Belle de

jour, Tristana and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie – exempting The Milky

Way and The Phantom of Liberty because it is difficult to determine the real from

the imagined; and That Obscure Object of Desire because I’ve yet to view it – are

driven by dreams. Tristana involves a dream with the guardian’s head used as

the swinging piece of a church bell. A liberal interpretation of this is that it is a

foreshadowing of the death she would facilitate; and of course oppression also

enters in due to the fact that it is a church bell.

The best use of dreams as a narrative trick is in The Discreet Charm of

the Bourgeoisie. He uses dreams as a part of the story, not to she any light on

any one character’s psyche, in fact it seems that these characters are

underdeveloped to Bunuel’s standards, but to make the narrative complex for the

viewer to follow. The dreams are so effective that the viewer at times cannot
distinguish between what is a dream and what is not. This works beautifully at

two points in the film. The first instance is when the dinner party is interrupted by

army officers. It’s an absurd scene that seems unbelievably unrealistic and yet it

is real. That instance leads to the dinner at the officer’s request at his home.

They go into the officer’s home and get cozy; the scene is calm and very realistic

and baits the viewer into believing that it is real. And the moment that the viewer

is convinced it is real, lights begin to turn on and the curtain is pulled back to

reveal that they are on a stage and the scene is indeed a dream. Bunuel even

takes this a step farther and makes that dream a dream within someone else’s

dream; it’s truly brilliant.

Bunuel’s should go down in history as one of the top five greatest

filmmakers of all time; though outside of college campus’ and art house theaters,

I doubt he will ever get the respect that he deserves. In the eyes of the general

public he will always remain behind Spielberg, Coppola, and Kubrick as great

directors and that is an absolute shame. Luis Bunuel understood cinema for what

it is, nothing and everything, and what he did is nothing short of amazing.