Bunuel - Hardcover

BAXTER, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 078670506X ISBN 13: 9780786705061

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 1998

Synopsis

With the help of the filmmaker's family and friends across the world, along with original interviews, unpublished documents, letters, and family records, the author of Fellini presents an illustrated chronicle of Luis Bun+a1uel's eventful life and career.

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Reviews

This vibrant, anecdote-packed biography of Spanish film director Luis Bu?uel (1900-1983) provides an intimate portrait of a secretive man. Baxter (Stanley Kubrick) zeroes in on the obsessions that drove the filmmaker and nurtured his films: fetishism, an anarchist-tinged faith in communism, hatred of Franco's regime and a near-pathological hostility to the Catholic Church, in which he was raised. Bu?uel emerges as a jealous man of rigid habits, a cross-dresser beset by fear of women, an audacious artist plagued by Meniere's syndrome, an inner ear disorder that destroyed his hearing later in life. Drawing on family papers, interviews with Bu?uel's son and former associates, and archival materials, Baxter plunges readers into Bu?uel's varied milieu, from Madrid to surrealist circles in mid-1920s Paris, to 1940s New York and Hollywood, to the Spanish emigre community in Mexico, where the filmmaker took refuge in 1945, under attack in his native Spain for his left-wing politics. Probing the chemistry among scriptwriters, producers and Bu?uel's personal circumstances, Baxter taps into the creative dynamo that gave us movies like Viridiana, Belle de Jour and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Photos.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A merely proficient biography of the master director of such Surrealist classics as Un Chien Andalou and Belle de Jour. Like many early directors, Buuel stumbled into the film-making business. He left his native Spain for a putative Parisian diplomatic posting with an offshoot of the League of Nations. While waiting for an assignment, he began to work in a variety of capacities on film sets and as a film critic. At the same time, he was drawn to the Surrealist movement. Desperate for a career, he borrowed money from his mother, and together with Salvador Dal made the short film Un Chien Andalou. With its dreamy eroticism, its shocking violence (most memorably epitomized in a shot of an eye being sliced with a razor), it was an enormous success, as was his next, equally controversial film L'Age D'Or. Beyond the shock value, there was a strongly consideredthough often fetishistic--aesthetic at work. Octavio Paz noted that Buuel's films balanced ``ferocity and lyricism, a world of dreams and blood'' with a ``bare, spare style that is not at all Baroque and results in a sort of exaggerated sobriety.'' Despite his notoriety, Buuel made almost no more films for the next ten years. The Spanish Civil War sent him into exile, first in Hollywood and then in Mexico, where, eventually, he was able to get work directing low-budget films. From their relative success, he was able to rebuild his career and to gain international acclaim. Unlike many directors whose late work is largely disappointing, Buuel enjoyed a great final flowering in his 70s when he produced three masterpieces in a row, including That Obscure Object of Desire, his final film. Veteran film biographer Baxter (Steven Spielberg, 1997, etc.) does a thoroughly competent job, but his writing is uninspired, and his research lacks a fulfilling depth. Not a tour de force but still a useful primer. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Luis Bu?uel (1900-83) is best remembered for his surrealist classic Un Chien Andalou (1928), in which a human eyeball is sliced by a razor. Because of his bizarre themes, left-wing politics, and the Spanish civil war, he was required to shuttle between Mexico and Europe, alternating routine commercial fare with the brutal realism of Los Olvidados and the shocking, sometimes blasphemous images in films like Exterminating Angel. By the late 1960s and 1970s, Bu?uel was hailed as the grand old man of international cinema for such masterworks as Belle de Jour. In this in-depth survey of a man who was always as much a poet and artist as a film director, Baxter (Fellini, LJ 11/1/94) discusses Bu?uel's turbulent relationship with Salvador Dali, admiration for Garcia Lorca, unrewarding stint in Hollywood, and lifelong awkwardness at directing actors. The author covers Bu?uel's personal and professional life perceptively, but a more detailed discussion of key films would have been helpful. However, the book will be useful in large film collections. (Bu?uel's "antibiography" My Last Sigh, LJ 9/1/83, gives the director's view of his own career.)?Stephen Rees, Levittown Regional Lib., PA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 078670506X
• ISBN 13: 9780786705061
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336