Recomiendo a todos mis enemigos que no lean este libro bajo ninguna circunstancia. A mis amigos, por favor, leedlo, es divertido, interesante y da unas cuantas pistas para disfrutar de la vida. ( )

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review of
Luis Buñuel's My Last Sigh
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 6, 2012

"I'm not a writer, but my friend and colleague Jean-Claude Carrière is. An attentive listener and scrupulous recorder during our many long conversations, he helped me write this book."

When I 1st encountered the historical traces of Surrealism, probably in the early 1970s, maybe even earlier, it was very exciting to me. I've always loved the paintings. Then, over the yrs, Surrealism just started to seem like Breton's takeover of dadaism & Breton's constant elimination of the people from the group for their various ideological 'infractions' rubbed me the wrong way. It seemed too authoritarian. Add to that that I found much of the writing disappointing in contrast to that of the proto-Surrealists like Lautréamont, Jarry, & Roussel & my interest in & enthusiasm for the Surrealists diminished. I've still loved the paintings, tho, & occasionally wd check out a Buñuel film I hadn't previously witnessed. Even Buñuel is someone whose work I've had varying enthusiasm for. I haven't liked many of the Mexican films very much, eg.

But, then, I got this bk, probably free from my moving-away friend Spat, & I started reading it in a desultory manner while recouping from an injury &, LO & BEHOLD!, I love Surrealism all over again & hope that I can find the 8 Buñuel films I haven't seen so that I can check them out! In fact, if I watch them more than once I'll be seeing them more than Buñuel ever did - according to this final statement of his.

1st, I must say, that sick of Surrealism or not, sick of Buñuel or not, "Un Chien andalou" is probably in my top 10 favorite films of all time - & many others of his are very dear to me indeed: "L'Age d'or", "Tierra sin pan", "The Exterminating Angel". "The Milky Way", "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie", "The Phantom of Liberty", & "That Obscure Object of Desire" being, perhaps, the main ones. The only Surrealist filmmaker being perhaps even more interesting to me being, perhaps, Jan Svankmajer.

Buñuel's career as a filmmaker having spanned the 50 yrs from 1928 to 1977 he's qualified to talk about 1st-hand experience w/ many aspects of film's development. A particular favorite of mine is the Explicator, the person who explains the movie as it's screened:

"In addition to the traditional piano player, each theater in Saragossa was equipped with its explicador, or narrator, who stood next to the screen and "explained" the action to the audience. "Count Hugo sees his wife go by on the arm of another man," he would declaim. "And now, ladies and gentlemen, you will see how he opens the drawer of his desk and takes out a revolver to assassinate his unfaithful wife!"

"It's hard to imagine today, but when the cinema was in its infancy, it was such a new and unusual narrative form that most spectators had difficulty understanding what was happening. Now we're so used to film language, to the elements of montage, to both simultaneous and successive action, to flashbacks, that our comprehension is automatic; but in the early years, the public had a hard time deciphering this new pictorial grammar. They needed an explicador to guide them from scene to scene." - p 32

Now, I love the idea of explication & have used it in the 21st century. Take, eg, my:
"Satanic Liposuction, Neoasm?!, & YOU!!" wch has a 'final' version revised to include screening footage from Orgone Cinema 1999 five projector version, 2000 Melbourne Super-8 Club version w/ explication & reel change tarot reading, 2007 Jefferson Presents explication from S. Cannon, John Allen Gibel & myself (tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE).
& I think I can safely say that (v)audiences still often find my own movies difficult to understand even w/ explication b/c they're deliberately designed to stretch the attn & reference capacity of the human brain. What for some people is a fast succession of incomprehensible images is for others a succession of comprehensible reference points. I realize that even if there were to be a human being who cd talk fast enuf to 'explain' these references, it's unlikely there wd be anyone capable of following the speech. But that might change & I hope that movies like my own might contribute to that change.

Alas, as much as I loved this bk, I have to say that I was once again disappointed to find that someone whose work I respect was enabled to make it b/c of their wealthy family. The refreshing thing is how honest & direct Buñuel is about it. I became even more convinced that he was a true "Republican" (as in the Spanish Civil War sense).

"I remember my mother weeping with despair when, in 1928 or 1929, I announced my intention of making a film. It was as if I'd said: "Mother, I want to join the circus and be a clown." A family friend, a lawyer, had to be enlisted to convince her that there was a lot of money to be made in films. In fact, he pontificated, someone might even produce an interesting piece of work on the order of the spectacular Italian films about ancient Greece and Rome. (My mother allowed herself to be persuaded, but she never saw the film she'd financed.) - p 33

Ha ha! Buñuel & Dali's "Un Chien andalou" was financed by Buñuel's rich mom!!

"I was having a drink with Claude Jaeger at the Select in Paris one evening and became so outrageously rowdy that all the customers left. Only one woman remained behind. Not exactly sober, I made my way to her table, sat down, and started talking, announcing to her that she was Russian, that she'd been born in Moscow . . . and after a string of other details, we both simply stared at each other openmouthed - we'd never seen each other before!" - p 69

I particularly loved this story b/c a very similar thing happened w/ me. In 1985 or thereabouts I went on a date of sorts w/ a woman that I didn't know very well & we went to a bar & had some drinks. Given my love of extemporizing, I started rambling on w/ a story about her childhood in Italy - basically meant to entertain her. I was in just the right mode of relaxation that seems conducive to stream-of-consciousness hitting an unintentional mark. ANYWAY, she asked me how I cd possibly know all these things. My impromptu imaginary description of her childhood in Italy was accurate. I didn't even realize that she was from Italy. Alas, I've since asked this friend if she remembered that & she didn't - but I certainly do.

"Like the señoritos I knew in Madrid, most surrealists came from good families; as in my case, they were bourgeois revolting against the bourgeoisie." - p 107

"What fascinated me most, however, in all our discussions at Cyrano, was the moral aspect of the movement. For the first time in my life I'd come into contact with a coherent moral system that, as far as I could tell, had no flaws. It was an aggressive morality based on the complete rejection of all existing values. We had other criteria: we exalted passion, mystification, black humour, the insult, and the call of the abyss. Inside this new territory, all our thoughts and actions seemed justifiable; there was simply no room for doubt. Everything made sense. Our morality may have been more demanding and more dangerous than the prevailing order, but it was also stronger, richer, and more coherent." - p 107

Now I have mixed feelings about the above. It was all too easy for them to scorn existing moral systems insofar as they were mostly well-to-do & didn't have to interface w/ society in a more practical manner. They were spoiled brats, intelligent spoiled brats, but spoiled brats nonetheless. Just as I scorn William Burroughs' exalted example of the junkie, wch he cd afford as the scion of a wealthy family, so do I scorn any human who provides an example that doesn't acknowledge the level of privilege that enables it. But, to Buñuel's credit, Buñuel acknowledges his privilege & is also shown as a person whose ethics were deeply felt. & many of the Surrealists sincerely addressed socio-economic inequality by participation in the Communist Party. Many also left the CP by rejecting its narrow-mindedness & authoritarianism. Buñuel explains this well.

Nonetheless, the Surrealists bordered a bit too close for comfort to my mind to Nazism. The composer George Antheil claims that the Surrealists, who supported his music, punched people who didn't like Antheil's "Ballet Mechanigue" at its Paris premier. No doubt the Surrealists were reacting against the oppression of the stodgy to what they considered to be forces of progress. Nonetheless, I don't condone bulying by anyone - even people I agree w/ otherwise.

Surrealists made a practice of insulting priests. Buñuel, as a Republican, nonetheless reports even-handedly about the Spanish Civil War's extremities of anti-Catholicism:

"The priests and the rich landowners - in other words, those with conservative leanings, whom we assumed would support the Falange - were in constant danger of being executed by the Republicans. The moment the fighting began, the anarchists liberated all the political prisoners and immediately incorporated them into the ranks of the Confederación Nacional de Trabajo, which was under the direct control of the anarchist federation. Certain members of this federation were such extremists that the mere presence of a religious icon in someone's room led automatically to Casa Campo, the public park on the outskirts of the city where the executions took place. People arrested at night were always told that they were going to "talk a little walk."" - pp 151-152

Now, I'm an anarchist & I certainly support the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War & I absolutely DETEST religion. However, I don't support such mass executions. A selective assassination of Hitler, yes, wholesale executions of religious people or anyone else just b/c I disagree w/ them, NO! Does that make me a namby-pamby 'moderate'? Hardly. People are always in too big of a hurry to kill other people to make a 'revolution'. To me, a much more difficult revolution wd be one where people actually agree to disagree.

"Despite my ideological sympathies with the anarchists, I couldn't stand their unpredictable and fanatical behavior. Sometimes, it was sufficient merely to be an engineer or to have a university degree to be taken away to Casa Campo." - p 156

I respect Buñuel not for being bourgeois but for having the sense to recognize the social validity of the anarchist position w/o having to endorse its extremities to 'show' how 'hard-core' he was. He had the self-confidence to remain an individualist. The nazis thought they cd change the world by completely eradicating their 'enemy', the Jews. Anyone, who thinks they're going to 'improve' the world by killing off their enemies wholesale is thinking along the same lines as Hitler - despite propaganda bombast to the contrary. Killing the 'enemy' is the same old same old shit that humanity's been disastrously pursuing since day one.

"Then there was André Derain, tall, well-built, and very popular, who remained somewhat separate from the group [the Surrealists]. He was much older than I - at least twenty years - and often used to talk to me about the Paris Commune. He was the first to tell me about men being executed during the fierce repression led by the king's soldiers, simply because they had had calluses on their hands (the stigmata of the working class)." - p 122

Oi! I wonder if Pol Pot took inspiration from such stories - after all, he was french educated. The Khmer Rouge are reputed to've executed people for not having calluses.

"Bataille's wife, Sylvia, one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen, later married Jacques Lacan." - p 122

Small world.

"May 1968 was a series of extraordinary moments, not the least of which was seeing old surrealist slogans painted everywhere, slogans such as "All power to the imagination!" and "It is forbidden to forbid!" - p 125

"I told myself that if this had been happening in Mexico, it wouldn't have lasted more than two hours, and there would surely have been a few hundred casualties to boot, which is exactly what happened, of course, in October on the Plaza de las Tres Culturas. And yet in Paris a week later, everything was back to normal, and the great, miraculously bloodless, celebration was over." - p 125

"Like me, the students talked a great deal but did very little" - p 125

"Did very little"? Perhaps. Or perhaps they created some T.A.Z.s (Temporary Autonomous Zones, as Hakim Bey wd put it) & showed at least a little of what was possible w/o having to kill anybody - wch, as far as I'm concerned, is a great leap forward.

I've spent much of my life trying to actually do instead of fictionalizing about doing - & I've often been frustrated by the seemingly common preference for the fictionalization. But can I really blame people for playing it safe? In fiction, all sorts of havoc can be wrought w/o its having to be real.

"Since I knew the name of the leader of this terrorist group, as well as the hotel in Paris where he lived, I contacted the prefect, who was a Socialist, as soon as I got back to the embassy. He assured me that they'd pick him right up; but time went by, and nothing happened. Later, when I ran into the boss sitting happily with his friends at the Select on the Champs-Elysées, I wept with rage. What kind of world is this? I asked myself. Here's a known criminal, and the police don't want any part of him!" - p 162

Shades of Carlos anyone? While my choice of one paragraph out of a much more explanatory many may be confusing to the reader of this review, suffice it to say that terrorism has always & will always be primarily a tool of the state - no matter how it's propagandized otherwise.

In my review of Surreal friends I mention Edward James, a collector of Surrealist artwork. I also criticize the authors of that bk as politically naive &/or suspect. Buñuel's mention of James seems much more 'street-credible':

"The Englishman, Edward James, had just bought all of Dali's 1938 output, and did indeed want to give the Republicans am ultramodern bomber which was then hidden in a Czechoslovakian airport. Knowing that the Republic was dramatically short of air strength, he was making us this handsome present - in exchange for a few masterpieces from the Prado." - p 164

"Of course, this is risky reasoning. If our birth is totally a matter of chance, the accidental meeting of an egg and a sperm (but why, in fact, that particular egg and sperm among all the millions of possibilities?), chance nonetheless disappears when societies are formed, when the fetus - and then the child - finds himself subjected to its laws." - p 172

This is something Stanislav Lem explores in some detail, perhaps in The Chain of Chance, perhaps in A Perfect Vacuum, perhaps in Microworlds, perhaps in all 3.

"In the end, belief and the lack of it amount to the same thing. If someone were to prove to me - right this minute - that God, in all his luminousness, exists, it wouldn't change a single aspect of my behavior." - p 173

I'm reminded of a philosophical discussion I had w/ my friend Read. He made a good case for everything as totally predetermined by what goes before it, I probably debated for other possibilities. In the end, we both agreed that it ultimately didn't matter in terms of how we'd conduct our actual lives.

Buñuel tells a story about an autobiography of Dali's leading to Buñuel's losing a job in the US. He then meets Dali in NYC:

"He was a bastard, I told him a salaud; his book had ruined my career.

""The book had nothing to do with you," he replied. "I wrote it to make myself a star. You've only got a supporting role."" - p 183

"As unlikely as it may sound, I've never been able to discuss the amount of money offered to me when I sign a contract. Either I accept or refuse, but I never argue. I don't think I've ever done something for money that I didn't want to, and when I don't want to do something, no offer can change my mind. What I won't do for one dollar, I also won't do for a million." - pp 191-192

"Although I had excellent working relationships with my Mexican crews, I had to accept subjects I would normally have refused and work with actors who weren't always right for their roles. When all's said and done, however, I never made a single scene that compromised my convictions or my personal morality." - p 198

"On several occasions, both American and European producers have suggested that I tackle a film version of Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, a novel set in Cuernavaca." [..] "Other directors besides myself have been tempted by the beauty of the story, but so far no one has made the movie." - p 194

John Huston made a film of it the yr after Buñuel died.

"My last abortive American project was the time Woody Allen proposed that I play myself in Annie Hall. He offered me thirty thousand dollars for two days work, but since the shooting schedule conflicted with my trip to New York, I declined, albeit not without some hesitation. (Marshall McLuhan wound up doing the self-portrait in my place, in the foyer of a movie theater.)" - p 194

I'm obviously posting my resumé on the wrong job boards.

"Disguise is a fascinating experience, because it allows you to experience another life. When you're a worker, for instance, sales people immediately suggest you buy the cheapest things; people are always cutting in front of you in line, and women never look at you. Clearly, the world simply isn't made for you at all." - p 227

I'm reminded of a Michael Moore tv show where he had a black scholar try to hail a cab at the same time as a white recently released convict of substantial criminal record. The black guy cdn't get a cab, the white guy had no problem. These are lessons that more people shd learn thru direct experience.

It's great to be a big deal director who makes 35mm films & gets them shown internationally.. BUT, then there's this:

"One other thing I do regret about this film are the cuts I had to make to please the censors, especially the scene between Georges Marchal and Catherine Deneuve, whom he addresses as his daughter when she lies in a coffin in a private chapel after a Mass celebrated under a splendid copy of one of Grünewald's Christs. the suppression of the Mass completely alters the character of this scene." - pp 242-243

Buñuel's last paragraph's ending wd make a great scene in a movie paying tribute to him:

"I'd love to rise from the grave every ten years or so and go buy a few newspapers. Ghostly pale, sliding silently along the walls, my papers under my arm, I'd return to the cemetery and read about all the disasters in the world before falling back to sleep, safe and secure in my tomb." - p 256

Bravo! ( )

Just as with Dylan and his "Chronicles", it proves that the maestro in one medium can be the maestro in another. Lovely to read and fascinating.

This is the autobiography of Luis Bunuel, the surrealist film director. I watched several of his films a few years ago, and once seen they are not easily forgotten. Though not one of the founding members of the Surrealist movement, he was welcomed into the circle and became a close friend of many of them, as well as becoming the foremost maker of Surrealist films. For those with an interest in Surrealism, this biography has much to offer in terms of the history of the group, their friendships and fallings-out, as well as Bunuel's own musings on Surrealism. However, there is also a wealth of social and political history, as Spain and Europe underewent much upheaval during these years. Bunuel is amusing throughout, and this is a trove of anecdotes and interesting events, conversations in cafes, scandal, and inspiration.
Bunuel was born in 1900, in a small town called Calanda in the Aragon region. Almost as a disclaimer, the biography begins with some musings on the vagaries of memory, and he makes the point that even if we remember something falsely, it is not the less a part of ourselves. This is perhaps quite the case, as he wrote this book in the last year of his life before he died in 1982. He then goes into his childhood in Calanda, which was essentially a feudal community that had changed little from medieval times, with a very strict Catholic worldview. Like many of the Surrealists, he grew up in a wealthy family and had the benefit of a good education, in his case initially with the Jesuits (like James Joyce). The driving idea behind surrealism though, as Bunuel explains it, is the idea of revolution and the surrealist act (ie creating a scandal or social shock). They thought of Surrealism as fundamentally not an aesthetic endeavour, but a moral or social one, though this in practice was just one facet of it.
Like most autobiographies, this will be most of interest to those with a pre-existing interest in either the protagonist or the area of their endeavours. Due to the nature of Surrealism, that its essence is hard to grasp, and deliberately so, there is a lot here that can be learnt about the movement. As an artistic phenomemenon it still has appeal, and considerably more depth than most other 20th Century creative movements, despite often not having an obvious aesthetic appeal. This book is not necessarily a good introduction to Surrealism by itself, but will be enlightening to those who have been perplexed by other products of this movement. ( )