Luis Bunuel

}This is the first major consideration of the life and films of the great director, Louis Buuel. The distinguished Spanish film critic and author, Francisco Aranda, traces Buuels phenomenal career of more than forty yearsfrom the sensational classics Un Chien andalou in 1929 and LAge Dor in 1930 to the Oscar-winning Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie in 1972 and Le Fantme de la Libert in 1974. Focusing initially on Buuels formative days as a student in the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid and his friendships with Federico Garcia Lorca, Josse Ortega y Gasset, and Salvador Dal, Aranda discusses the development of Buuels surrealist preoccupations through the use of important texts and cinema critiques written by him in the 1920s.Buuels collaboration in Paris with Dal on Un Chien andalou (the first surrealist film, which shocked audiences throughout the world) and LAge dor (where the th eater was attacked and closed by enraged rightists) are described in full, as are the stark documentaries that have been neglected until now: Las Hurdes and Espaa leal, en armas! And we are presented with painstaking analyses of the Mexican comedies (once dismissed by critics as his bad films) and Buuels favorite film, Los Olvidados, first prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival in 1951. Finally, Aranda analyzes the films of Buuels maturity: Viridiana, El ngel exterminador, Belle de Jour, Tristana, Le Charm discret de la bourgeoisie and Le Fantme de la Libert. He examines the Buuelian treatment of violence, cruelty, sexual aberration, sadism, and eroticism. }

Table of Contents:
Out of Innocence; Initiation; The Critical Man; Un Chien andalou; LAge dor; Anthology; Las HurdesTierra sin pan; The Spanish Comedies; Documentary; The Dark Times; Los Olvidados; From Susana to Archibaldo; Severe and Serene; Viridiana; The Great Films of Maturity: I; The Great Films of Maturity: II Trisana and Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie; Anthology; Instrumentation (1922); Downright Treachery (1922); Suburbs (1923); Palace of Ice (1927); Redentora (1929); The Rainbow and the Mustard Plaster (1927); Project for a Story (1927); A Proper Story (1927); An Improper Story (1927); The Comfortable Watchword of St Huesca (unpublished); Letter to Jos Bello (1927); On Love; Bird of Anguish (1929); A Giraffe (1933); II. Buuel As Critic; Metropolis; Carl Dreyers Jeanne dArc; Camille; News from Hollywood (latest); Variations Upon the Moustache of Menjou; Napoleon Bonaparte; The Way of All Flesh; Buster Keatons College; Cinema, Instrument of Poetry; III. Scenarios; The Duchess of Alba; and Goya; son of Flauta.