Conditions deteriorate. Guests snatch an ax from the wall and break through plaster to open a pipe for drinking water. Two lovers kill themselves. The bodies are stacked in a closet. There are whiffs of black magic. The sheep wander into the room, are killed and cooked on a fire made from broken furniture; so close to civilization is the cave.
Bunuel belongs to a group of great directors who obsessively reworked the themes that haunted them. There is little stylistically to link Ozu, Hitchcock, Herzog, Bergman, Fassbinder or Bunuel, except for this common thread: Some deep wound or hunger was imprinted on them early in life, and they worked all of their careers to heal or cherish it. Bunuel was born in 1900, so the dates of his films correspond to the years of his life. He had the most remarkable late flowering in movie history. His Mexican films of the 1940s and '50s are often inspired--especially "Los Olvidados" (1950) and "The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz" and "El" (both 1955). "Viridiana" was his international comeback, and then came "The Exterminating Angel," which he said might be his last film--but the curtain was just rising on the great days of his career. His most famous film, "Belle de Jour" (1967), won the grand prize at Venice. It starred Catherine Deneuve as a respectable Parisian housewife who becomes fascinated by a famous bordello and finds herself working there two or three afternoons a week.
At the prize ceremony at Venice, Bunuel again announced his retirement. Not quite. In 1970, he starred Deneuve again, in "Tristana," a morbid romance between an aging pederast and the woman he adopts, mistreats and loses. After her leg is amputated, she returns to him for support, and revenge.
Then came three great films in which Bunuel's talent flowed in a great liberated stream of wicked satire and cheerful obsession. "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972), which won the Oscar as best foreign film, is a reversal of "Exterminating Angel." This time dinner guests are forever sitting down to a feast, but repeatedly frustrated in their desire to eat. Then came "The Phantom of Liberty" (1974), a free-form film that began with one group of characters, then followed another, and another. His last film was "That Obscure Object of Desire" (1977), about an aging man who believes one woman and no other can satisfy his desires; Bunuel had the woman played interchangeably by two different actresses.
Bunuel died in 1983, leaving behind a wonderful autobiography in which he said the worst thing about death was that he would not be able to read tomorrow's newspaper. He created a world so particular, it is impossible to watch any Bunuel film for very long without knowing who its director was. "The Exterminating Angel" begins with the statement, "The best explanation of this film is that, from the standpoint of pure reason, there is no explanation." He might have added, "Those seeking reason or explanations are in the wrong theater."
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