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Since his presence in the processions of Holy Week in Calanda,

the death has been part of my life.

I've never wanted to ignore it.

Luis Buñuel was born in Aragon at the beginning of the 20th century.

His father had made his fortune in Cuba, with a naval supply store

where they also sold weapons.

He returned to Calanda with many riches

and the intention of marrying a young and beautiful woman.

Luis Buñuel was the first-born of this well off family.

He dedicates a chapter of My Last Breath, his memoir,

to his childhood memories,

under the title of 'Death, Faith, Sex'.

This was a period in his life that he retained vivid memories of as an adult,

memories that made up his inner world and enriched his imagination,

and that he would showcase later throughout his films.

Buñuel's father took a series of stereoscopic photographs around 1910.

Buñuel kept these in his house in Mexico.

He sometimes looked at them with the melancholy of the exiled.

Pictures that show us his childhood years.

Buñuel would never forget these early years of his life.

Here we see him sneaking into this picture.

I keep from my distant past, my youth, multiple and clear memories

and also a plethora of faces and names.

Why are you so prideful, son?

I am proud of my freedom.

Buñuel writes in his memoirs:

It was in Calanda that I first interacted with death,

which, alongside a profound faith and the awakening of my sexual instinct,

constitute the living forces of my adolescence.

Look at these so innocent legs!

One day, I was walking with my father through an olive grove,

and the breeze brought to me a sweet and disgusting smell.

A hundred yards away, a dead donkey,

hideously bloated and pecked,

was being feasted on by a dozen vultures and several dogs.

Death made its presence felt constantly and was part of our lives,

as in the Middle Ages, just like faith.

We, deeply anchored in Roman Catholicism,

could not question any of its dogmas, not for a split second.

Our faith really was blind, at least up until we were fourteen,

and we all believed in the authenticity of the Calanda's miracle

performed in the year of grace of 1640.

It so happened that a wheel crushed the leg of Miguel Juan Pellicer,

a resident of Calanda, and it had to be amputated.

He was a very pious man who went to church every day,

dipped his finger into the Virgin's lamp,

and rubbed his stump with the oil.

One night, the Virgin came down from heaven with her angels

and they gave him a new leg.

In our town, where nobody doubted the story,

it was said that King Philip IV had come to kiss the restored leg

and that he gave Pellicer a medieval armour.

I was only interested in the aspect of the cut leg.

Curiously, that also allured Hitchcock.

During a meal that some Hollywood directors threw for me,

Hitchcock, sitting next to me, repeatedly exclaimed:

'Ah, Tristana's cut off leg…!'

Around 1960 in Mexico I told a French Dominican about Calanda's miracle.

He smiled and said to me:

'My friend, I think that you are crossing the line a little bit.'

My father gifted Calanda's church a superb paso,

one of those sculptures that are paraded in processions,

burned by anarchists during the Civil War.

It is a precious miracle.

Yes, such a wonderful story.

Yes, priest, it is truly beautiful.

Other exist that are much better.

I could tell you many more, until dawn.

There is no sweeter nor deeper mystery…

… than Virgin Mary's.

Maybe God will let us see one of Simon's miracles.

So be it.

You are already well.

And what's the first thing he does with his miraculous hands?

Let me see your hands, father. Are they the same as before?

Shut up, dummy! Leave me alone!

Lord, please give back health to this innocent creature.

In exchange I offer you my health and life,

and humbly accept all calamities and losses,

all the aches and pains that may ail a man.

Help us Lord of Chalma!

Help! Help us oh Lord!

Get out Devil, respect this house!

Back off Satan, you'll get nothing from Santa Cruz

say a thousand times: 'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus'.

One could say that where I was born, the Middle Ages lasted until World War I.

Life unfolded, horizontal and monotonous,

most certainly organised and lead by the church's bells.

The very hard fought battles of instinct versus chastity,

even though they were only thoughts, gave us an immense sense of guilt.

'Why is sex seen with such horror in Catholicism?'

I've often asked that myself.

This relentless prohibition creates a feeling of sin that can be delicious.

That's what happened to me for years.

In the same manner, and for reasons that escape me,

I've have always felt a certain simile between the sexual act and death.

A secret but constant link between them.

I've even tried to translate this inexplicable feeling into images,

as in Un Chien Andalou;

when the man caresses the woman's bare breasts,

his face suddenly turns corpse-like.

A corpse-like face.

Could it be because during my youth and childhood,

I was victim of the biggest sexual repression history has ever known?

Anyway, some aspects of my brief time, about three years,

in the exalted ranks of Surrealism, always stuck with me my whole life.

Above all else, what I have left is:

free access to the depths of the self which I so yearned for.

That call to the irrational,

to the impulses that spring from the dark side of the soul.

Before Andrè Breton published the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924,

dreams already existed.

So did the unconscious world and psychic automatism,

as well as all other elements that the movement stands for.

Just remember The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch.

or the black paintings and caprices of the Aragonese Francisco de Goya.

But also in Buñuel's father's stereoscopic photographs,

we can see a peasant acting in front of the camera.

He just pokes his head out of the branches of a vine

showing a curious and grotesque pre-Surrealist attitude.

The photograph in which Buñuel's parents are posing

with an umbrella next to the mountains of Calanda,

is reminiscent of the Disinherited Mountains,

which many years later would captivate Buñuel in Las Hurdes.

Due to the surrounding landscape,

it appears that this was taken in a property owned by Leonardo Buñuel

which was known as Masada del Vicario.

Buñuel refers to in the 11th spot of the surrealist poem 'A Giraffe'.

Represented in 1933 in Hyeres,

for which artist Alberto Giacometti made this wooden giraffe.

A pig bladder membrane replaces the spot.

Nothing else.

Take the giraffe, transport it to Spain

to put it in the place called Masada del Vicario.

7 kilometres from Calanda, to the south of Aragon.

With its head facing north.

Punch through the membrane and look through the hole.

You'll see a poor whitewashed house in the middle of a desert landscape.

In front: a fig-tree. A few metres from the door.

In the background, bare mountains and olive trees.

Perhaps… right then…

an old ploughman will come out of the house with bare feet.

Among this series of stereoscopic images, three stand out:

those that represent a quarrel between two peasants.

One of our shepherds was stabbed with a knife during a stupid argument.

He was killed.

Every man used to carry a knife tucked in their sash.

There was an autopsy, in the graveyard's chapel

performed by the village doctor and his assistant, who was also a barber.

I managed to sneak in.

Buñuel recreated some behaviours of the inhabitants of Las Hurdes,

making them play themselves in front of the camera.

One of the fiercest men of Calanda was Don Leoncio, one of two doctors

and a republican to the bone.

He had covered his office's walls with full-colour pages from El Motín,

an anarchist and extremely anticlerical magazine,

one very popular back in the Spain of the era.

This enlightened doctor was also interested in insects,

and owned this encyclopedia,

a book that influenced the young Buñuel and awakened his interest in entomology.

Above all, be quiet. Very quiet.

Hold your breath.

Do not move and- Come on! What are you waiting for?!

Good job!

Very good job.

And you had never shot before?

Not really, no.

Very well!

I thought you were fond of butterflies.

Yes, I like them. I wish I had missed.

In Madrid, Buñuel lives for a while in the 'Residencia de Estudiantes'.

There he meets other members of the so-called Generation of 27,

such as his friend García Lorca, who dedicates this poem to him:

Special dedication to my beloved Luis Buñuel,

act of eternal friendship, Federico:

Landscape without song.

Blue sky.

Yellow field.

Blue mountain.

Yellow field.

Across the deserted plain… walks an olive tree.

A single olive tree.

He also began his friendship with Salvador Dalí,

who reflected the Madrid atmosphere in the watercolour Late Night Dreams.

Dalí also painted his portrait back then.

Taking notice of the presence of American professors at the Residence,

Buñuel put up a notice to schedule a visit to the Prado Museum.

He pretended to be an expert, in order to play a prank on them:

all this in a museum that, as a matter of fact, he knew quite well.

A large group of Americans came along.

They didn't suspect they were being played.

As I guided them through the museum's rooms

I would tell them the first thing that I could come up with:

that Goya was a bullfighter

and kept fatal sexual relationships with the Alba Duchess.

The North Americans listened to me with a serious demeanour.

Some of them were even taking notes.

But some of them went to complain to the headmaster.

Buñuel would often attend Ramón Gómez de la Serna's gatherings

and as a result discovers the Ultraist movement.

He wrote his first poems and considers publishing them

in a book titled as An Andalusian Dog.

The puddles formed a decapitated domino of buildings,

one of which is the tower described to me as a kid.

It has a single window.

As high as mother's eyes when leaning over the crib.

By the door hangs a hanged-man swinging over the abyss.

enclosed by eternity, howling for space's sake.

It's me.

It is my skeleton of which nothing but the eyes remains.

As soon as they smile at me, they squint…

and going to eat a breadcrumb from within my brain!

The window opens and a woman appears, applying polissoir to her nails.

Once she thinks they're sharp enough she gouges out my eyeballs

and hurls them into the streets.

My sockets are left sightless, alone, without desires, nor sea, nor chicks.

Without anything.

A nurse comes to sit next to me at the coffee table.

She unfolds a newspaper from 1846 and reads with an exalted voice:

When Napoleon's troops entered Zaragoza, the vile Zaragoza,

they just found wind blowing through the empty streets.

Only Luis Buñuel's eyes croaked in a puddle.

Napoleon's soldiers finished them off with their bayonets.

In 1925 Buñuel moved to Paris to learn the ropes of cinema

under the tutelage of Jean Epstein as his assistant.

What impressed me was precisely that wall, that struggle.

It convinced me that cinema was able to awaken artistic emotions.

For the first time, I felt a certain chill, a romantic emotion,

and the chance of showing my world-view to others.

He also had admiration for the North American comic cinema.

Buñuel's interest in comic cinema is key in understanding

the genesis of his first film,

which he began to film at the beginning of April 1929 in Paris.

It is revealing what he wrote to present the 6th session of Madrid's Film Club,

which took place during 1929 with the title EL CINE COMICO:

This session is going to be definitive

and oddly enough, it hasn't been done yet

in any other cinema or club in the whole world.

People are so ridiculous

and have so many prejudices that they believe that Faust or Potemkin

are superior to all the buffoonery, even if they are no such thing;

in these films, which I'd describe as the new poetry,

the surreal equivalent in cinema is found only in these films.

Much more surrealist than Man Ray's films.

He even wrote a review of Buster Keaton's College:

The film is beautiful like a bathroom.

This was a period of time in which he watched three movies a day

and wrote some film reviews.

Curiously enough, his first film premieres alongside Man Ray's:

Les mystères du château de Dé.

Shot at the Viscount of Noailles's mansion in Hyères,

on the French Riviera.

Cinema became the perfect canvas for innovation,

to be playful, to invent a new wave of poetics,

in essence, to portray the world of dreams and the unconscious

just as André Breton advocated for.

Films made between 1926 and 1928 had already used cinema as gateway

for Surrealist creation.

Cinematographic images that were between experimental and avant-garde art,

in between poetry and the breakthrough.

Images that open up new paths to the language of cinema,

to cinema understood as an artwork created by an author.

Works that lie in between the film-art and anti-artistic film…

Films that much like Hans Richter's were destroyed by the Nazis

for being considered 'degenerate art'.

The inner workings of cinema go very well with Surrealism.

I played a small role as a smuggler in 'Carmen',

with Raquel Meller, directed by Jacques Feyder,

a director that I still admire.

While he learns about cinematographic recording with Epstein,

he takes part in his films: Mauprat and The Fall of the House of Usher.

During his participation in Siren of the Tropics,

starring Josephine Baker and directed by Mario Nalpas and Henri Étiévant,

he meets the actor Pierre Batcheff,

who would end up starring in his first film.

In the end, Buñuel does not publish his book of poems,

and he recycles the title for Un Chien Andalou.

Dalí and I, while working on Un Chien Andalou's script,

employed an approach for an automatic writing of sorts,

we were as yet unlabelled surrealists.

They used a method similar to automatic writing,

where, having heard the other's proposal,

they would only have three seconds to accept it or reject it,

without any right to change their minds after, putting ideas together

as if they were gags in a comedy film.

The film was considered surrealist after its premiere in Paris,

making it possible for Buñuel and Dali

to be admitted in the exclusive Surrealist group.

The film received a good amount of praise.

Breton said it was a work that resolved dream and reality,

two apparently contradictory states,

into a kind of absolute reality: a surreality.

After joining the group, Buñuel meets the members of this movement,

as well as personalities from the world of the French culture,

such as Cocteau, who was so enthusiastic about the film

that he would put him in contact with the Viscount of Noailles,

who would later finance his second film: L'Age d'Or.

This was originally envisioned as the sequel to Un Chien Andalou,

as the provisional title for the script shows: La Bete Andalouse.

Buñuel started to write this script with Dalí in early December of 1929.

In this work we can clearly see the influence of the Marquis de Sade:

With Sade I discovered an extraordinary subversive world,

that fits everything: from insects to the tradition of the human society,

sex, theology…

Oh well… he truly fascinated me.

There is no religion that doesn't bear imposture stigma and stupidity

But if one of them truly deserves our hatred and contempt,

that would be this barbarous religion of Christianity.

Nature is self-sufficient.

That deified ghost is nothing more than a tale invented by arrivistes.

A scandalous vulgarity that deserves not a single minute of reflection.

The other great influence is by Freud:

The struggle between Eros and Thanatos,

between sexual desire and a destructive impulse.

These influences reappear years later in his Mexican, Spanish and French films.

L'Age d'or is a romantic film, featuring Surrealism's full-force.

The only work I filmed with euphoria, enthusiasm and destructive fever.

I wanted to attack order and ridicule their eternal principles.

I was determined to provoke a scandal.

The scandal would arrive very soon: the cinema was attacked

by the Camelots du Roi, a right-wing extremist group.

The paintings displayed at the entrance were destroyed,

and the film was forbidden in France for 50 years.

A tremendous Surrealist success!

Years later, Buñuel included a poster of that extreme right-wing group

in the film The Diary of a Chambermaid.

Surrealism made me understand that freedom and justice do not exist,

but it also has given me a moral code.

In 1932 I left the Surrealist group,

although I was on good terms with my former companions.

I started to disagree with that kind of intellectual aristocracy,

with their artistic & moral extremes that isolated us from the world,

that limited ourselves to our own company.

With the documentary Las Hurdes, Buñuel condemns injustice

and contributes to the social change that the Spanish Republic promotes.

in opposition to the privileges that the Catholic Church

was trying to perpetuate.

With a left-wing political commitment close to anarchism,

he overcomes the contradictions of Surrealism, as well as

his own bourgeois condition.

Without this transformation the documentary would have never happened

and yet, at the same time, the influence of Surrealism is clear

in its aesthetic too, as if it were a nightmare.

Poverty, famine, incest, consequence of a horrible misery,

have resulted in many disabled inhabitants.

After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War

Buñuel moves to Paris to collaborate in the International 1937 Exhibition.

The Spanish Republic tries to get help from the Occidental Democracies,

to counter Hitler and Mussolini's support to Franco's troops.

The Spanish Republic commissioned El Guernica by Picasso,

an iconic work of the 20th century.

In a pioneering manner, a screen was erected where Buñuel showed Spanish films.

He takes part in the creation of the Republic's documentary, Spain 1936,

which was made using fragments filmed by cameramen at the front-lines.

From Le Havre, the same place where he ends Un Chien Andalou's shooting,

Buñuel and his family depart towards the United States in September 1938.

He can film his friends and family with a small camera in that country.

Here we can see his son Rafael and Jeanne, his wife.

He also filmed his son Juan Luis playing in Central Park, New York.

He was hired by MumA in New York as Editor-in-Chief,

until he was forced to resign after Dalí's book The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí

accused him of being a communist and atheist.

Now unable to provide for his wife Jeanne Rucar and his two sons,

he was forced to go back to Los Angeles to search for a job.

There he was, cleaning a table, when suddenly…

Denise Tual found me, and she was interested

in making, in Paris, a film version

of Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba.

She offered it to me to direct.

I went with her to Mexico.

The project with Lorca's work didn't fly,

but she introduced me to the producer Óscar Dancigers, who said to me:

"I have something for you."

" Would you stay in Mexico?"

Mexico, a country that, as it did for so many other Spanish refugees,

took him in.

There Buñuel would get back to filmmaking.

Films that ranged from a 'rent-paying cinema', as Buñuel put it,

to a profoundly personal kind of cinema.

This period is often undervalued, despite having true masterpieces,

films in which Buñuel's passing through the wild and subterranean

water flows of Surrealism is apparent,

although the roots of his Spanish culture also emerge.

There is a visual poetry running throughout Don Luis' fiction,

like a surreal stream.

Throughout all his cinema,

Buñuel was able to create disturbing images,

scenes that are at odds with the story,

due to the apparent lack of relation or logic.,

images that can't be reduced just to one meaning, nor even a symbolic one.

One of the trapped women carries, for whichever reason, chicken feet

in her handbag.

These forewarn the viewer about the destruction of the bourgeois order.

At the Kabbalah we call 'keys' to those magical objects

that can open the doors to the unknown.

Now, Blanca… Grab it tightly!

Like that.

And you, Silvia, the other way around, there we go.

The same fixations, tendencies, obsessions, always flourish.

All of my films resemble each other to a degree.

Little dove from the South… little dove!

Roosters and hens are part of many visions that I have,

convulsive sometimes.

It can't be explained,

but I can't help but to see them as nightmarish creatures.

At first, instead of Tristana,

I considered naming the film Roosters Wanted To Sing.

A dear topic to the Surrealists was that of 'mad love'.

In some films romantic passion is treated with a dark humour.

Ujo! Little fella!

Where did you drop your body?

You just brought your head!

I came to say that I am going with all of you, because I love you!

I too have my heart in my snout because of you! My little treasure!

Beatriz! Ujo is coming with us, he says he loves me!

Love is the most beautiful thing there is, right?

Do you really love her, little Ujo?

Yes, I love her.

You might be ugly, public… Truly I had never loved before,

but when I first saw you for real… What a fondness I felt!

You see? He's my boyfriend!

Like all conventional love scenes,

this one bothered me.

So I tried to sabotage it.

How could've I imagined before coming to the camps…

that I would get mixed up in all this?

Or that I would meet you?

Nor did I.

I came here to see my brother, to meet him.

And here we are…

In a romantic sequence, Buñuel shows us a puddle of sludge,

an ironic contrast with the sentimentalism of this scene,

which also is reminiscent of the magma of L'Age d'Or.

Mad love, passionate and desperate, contrasts with the representation

of desire in many of his films

which always avoid being explicit.

Since, as Buñuel said:

I find on-screen kisses repugnant.

When Jaibo manages to seduce Marta, Pedro's mother in Los Olvidados,

he literally shuts the door on our faces.

Leaving already?

Popsicles! Popsicles!

There's popsicles! Ice-cream!

Do you fancy one?

Sure! If he has a chocolate one…

Give me two chocolate ones.

Thank you.

The car's engine heating up contrasts with the ice cream the protagonists eat,

signifying that the car's engine is not the only thing that's heating up.

Virginia, since that day in which…

Don't you remember?

Whenever I close my eyes I see you.

And I see you because…

You're not helping me?

Helping you?

Yes.

To tell you that I love you.

Then tell me!

But I just told you…

Told me what?

That I love you!

It must've cooled down by now.

No, no way! I was telling you that—

I'm going to try!

In the strange dream-hallucination that Oliverio has,

An apple peel goes from his mouth to the fruit his mother is peeling.

A peel that Raquel, the temptress, bites.

Once this Freudian umbilical cord of sorts is cut,

they are free to lay together,

to quench their desire, accompanied by the jovial and improvised music.

Take notice of the final joke, with a lamb on Oliverio's lap.

Thinking about me?

Also revealing is the act of Simon's mother covering the anthills,

as if she was trying to protect her son from the itch of desire.

also shown in the ant-covered hand in Un Chien Andalou.

Buñuel uses the film Susana to take revenge, with humour,

for the failure of Gran Casino.

The passion that the protagonist provokes, alters the patriarchal order

at the farmhouse of Mr. Guadalupe,

affecting him

and also Jesús, the farm's overseer.

They will scold me because of you!

Listen, girlie…

If you stick your neck out, no one but me will scold you.

I'd rather choose the one that can scold me.

You've made me all dirty!

now you know…

If you ever want to ride around the countryside, you let me know.

Then wait for me sitting, because you'll get tired standing up.

Here the nun shows us her legs while undressing.

Buñuel uses his cinema as dictated by the Surrealist's thesis of scandal,

and is therefore critical towards the bourgeois society,

and especially towards the clergy.

Good morning, Moncho!

Good morning.

Good morning, Rita. How will you behave today?

Today? Very well!

Do I bother you with my milk glass?

No, ma'am.

Is it very difficult?

No, not really.

Here, you try it.

- Oh! But I don't know how to… - Here, sit down.

You have to pull very hard.

- Grab it tightly! - You shut it, brat!

Grab it, don't be afraid, Miss.

Mr. Jaime is very good at it!

- Come on, get out of here! - I don't want to!

Tears or willow trees over the riverbank.

Of golden teeth.

Of pollen teeth.

Like the mouth of a young maiden,

from whose hair the river was sprouting.

In each droplet a small fish.

In each fish a golden tooth.

In each golden tooth, a 15-year-old smile.

For the dragonflies to breed on.

What might maidens think of when the wind makes her thighs visible?

This way.

I've brought you asphodels.

You used to like them so much…

You're so beautiful…

Your skin looks so white still…

Fetishist rituals have a religious component to them,

and lie somewhere between eroticism and death.

Everyone has fetishes to a degree.

But some take it too far…

A SPANISH FILM WINS THE PALME D'OR AT THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

The Cannes Film Festival contributed to Buñuel's international expansion,

and awakened Serge Silberman's interest in producing his films.

Silberman introduced him to Jean Claude Carrière,

with whom Buñuel would write eight scripts,

as well as his memoirs.

This creative partnership helped him to shoot six films in France,

films in which Buñuel remains faithful to Surrealism

as well as his most intimate of obsessions.

Walk! Walk, walk!

I want to see the way those little boots move!

To see my little boots alive again!

We can't imitate Buñuel, because the surrealistic ethos implies

taking into account our own inner selves,

our memories and our obsessions.

That which makes us unique.

The pleasure of watching in secret.

To see without being seen.

Come here!

We're being spied.

Francisco, what are you going to do?

The painter Victor Brauner was moved by the scene of the sliced eye,

because he had painted himself missing an eye.

Not long after he tried to stop a fight between two painters,

a glass hit him in the eye and he was blinded.

The film Los Olvidados is one of the best and most important

of all of the works he filmed in Mexico.

Aside from being the beginning for the so called 'Third Cinema',

where cinema was utilised as a form of social denunciation,

the film has also been registered by UNESCO at the Memory of the World Programme.

In this work, surrealist poetry has a strong presence,

just as Buñuel viewed it.

In the sequence of Pedro's dream, every element of drama is condensed.,

it's a scene Buñuel made some changes to,

which can be inferred from analysing the script.

It manages to merge, as Octavio Paz said:

[…] Spanish tradition with Mexican imagery.

Mum!

Mum! Why didn't you give me bread last night?

Cinema is a wonderful and dangerous weapon;

if wielded by a free spirit, it's the best instrument to express

emotions…

instinct…

Give it to me!

It's mine! It's just for me!

The representation of 'Jaibo's' agony after being shot down by the police,

is yet another instance of a Mument inspired by Surrealism,

one carried out with a striking economy of means.

Stop or I'll shoot!

One less… one less… one by one they'll all fall.

I wish they'd kill them all before they were born!

Nobody is entirely evil nor completely good in my films.

No black-and-white thinking.

Look, Jaibo! That scruffy mutt!

Look at him!

Here he comes…

No… no!

I'm already falling into the black hole…

I'm alone…

Alone…

Like always, my dear son…

Like always…

Hello, Joseph!

Are you… strolling around the forest?

Look! Snails! Do you want some?

No, thanks.

I wish I could steer my dreams in accordance to my desires,

if I could, I'd never wake up.

The performance of Don Juan Tenorio captivated him when he was in Madrid.

He got to play a part in a production of the Residencia de Estudiantes.

It is a theatre play in which desire crosses paths with death,

and reality with fantasy.

A play that represents the filming of one of his recurring dreams:

he finds himself acting and forgets his lines.

A dream within a dream within a film.

What's the meaning of this joke?

And to show your courage you have invited the Commander to have dinner.

And… to show your courage… you have invited the Commander…

He's insulted you…

It's incredible…

Excuse me.

Colonel…

The passion for dreaming, it's the limit between desire and reality.

Hey!

There is a relationship between imagination and reality.

There is not a separation as light and dark.

There is mutual influence, it exchanges elements.

When an image is shocking, I keep it I don't analyse it or wonder how

it came to be, if via association of ideas, emotion, a dream, a memory…

Us surrealists abandon ourselves to being invaded by images.

Being looked at with the eyes of an entomologist,

and abundant sense of humour,

the characters face fate's ups and downs.

Do not bless me alongside my goats!

Although I esteem you.

And I love you.

I think that this fella has lost it!

And it must be because he's been feasting on air alone!

My father, who was a wealthy emigrant commissioned a 1900s style house,

a bit Art-Nouveau-esque.

I'm in love with that era.

Every time I see this living room I wonder how could the architect

come up with such strange ideas.

Nothing seems to be guided by reason but by feelings, emotions…

… instinct.

Yes, truly, it is rather strange.

This house was built by Francisco's father when he returned from Paris.

Right after the Exposition of 1900.

He wasn't an architect, but was him who was inspired and planned it out

with the engineer.

He must've been a very original and capricious man.

The complete opposite to Francisco who is sensible and perfectly normal.

Francisco, paranoid protagonist of Él, is horrified to observe

what happens at church.

My God…

They know it all…

They know it all…

They are mocking me…

You too father Velasco! You too!

A most beautiful picture of Jesus's thorn-crowned head,

but letting out a guffaw.

The same image we see 27 years later in Nazarín.

Hey, what might this be?

Let me see…

Do you know what it is?

No, it must be one of those things blind people make.

No, man, it's one of those rosaries Catholics use to pray to the Virgin.

Oh really?

Truth is a myth,

being materialistic does not mean denying imagination, fantasy…

The Angelus prayer is a part of his childhood memories.

In Viridiana he presents to us an alternate montage in which

he juxtaposes classic praying with the construction work

for modernising a manor.

The Lord's angel announced to Mary…

And she gave birth through the working of the Holy Ghost.

Hail Mary, full art of grace, the Lord is with you…

… and blessed is the fruit of your womb.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us, poor sinners…

I am the handmaid of the Lord…

… let it be to me according…

Is the soup ready?

It's freezing!

And I don't know how to heat it up.

Do you name the bulls? Like with cats?

Of course!

Most of them are called 'Regret'.

Except the last one, whose name is 'Atonement'.

The same criticism against religion appears years later in Viridiana.

The Vatican attacked it after it received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Festival,

causing an enormous scandal.

For the Surrealists this meant, as we've seen, a great success.

The film was banned in Spain up until the arrival of democracy.

Buñuel, despite the scandal continued to value his creative freedom:

Viridiana continues my personal tradition since L'Age d'Or,

and with 30 years between them,

they are the two films that I've made with the most freedom.

Enedina is going to take a portrait of us all to keep as a memento.

And with what machine?

With one that my parents gave me.

Get over there!

But if you don't sit still I won't take the picture.

And when I say 'Stop!' Nobody moves!

Come on! Quickly!

Come on, lose the hat!

Hey, wake up!

Refugio, pick your hair! You can't see your face!

Riddle me this, which fowl eats at the farm?

The hen!

Come on! Everyone be quiet!

Years later, in Madrid, the priest that instigated the scandal

appeared on the set of That Obscure Object of Desire

with his criticism.

He told the actor Fernando Rey that he wanted to apologise.

The actor expelled him without a second thought.

The ban ended the Spanish producer of Viridiana.

Don't you move!

The priest is armed with a revolver,

and this results in a disturbing scene, filled with black humour.

He knows well what he does.

You mean to say that God is fine with crimes?

I said no such thing.

You should condemn violence from the pulpit.

And I do, son, I do!

But I can't tell my church-goers to let themselves be killed

without fighting back.

You're right.

And you're overreacting.

I'm overreacting?

When even the poorest spend every penny they have to but guns?

Everyone is armed!

I'm sure that the only two people in this town that aren't are you and me.

Just you, then.

Because I do carry a gun.

And you're the priest…

Wow, father…

You made me laugh without wanting to.

The short play we see being represented looks like a parody,

much like the wooden Christ two women are carrying in the tram,

which the camera maliciously positions underneath a pig's severed head.

Lord of the column…

I'm so afraid…

So am I.

This is why I told you to unveil with caution the holy Christ.

Maybe that'd make them fear God.

And them not wanting money rubs me the wrong way.

Nobody gives anything for free nowadays.

And this late!

Who knows if they intend to take us to one of those places…

And there…

May God help us.

The Virgin is part of their lives.

She is with them at work.

I feared that showing that could be considered disrespectful.

But here in Mexico, no one complained.

Hey, someone lend me a hand!

What's this? So big and so…

Oh! He can't even handle this!

I don't need your help!

Look at him! He's already trembling! Give it up, brute!

He can't even keep his underwear up!

The main character drinks dirty water with blood from her own injury,

and she is reminiscent, with her hand over her chest, of Mary Magdalene

the penitent.

Also a prostitute, just like her.

Tell me…

Why are mice, that are so tiny, are so smart?

And cows, being so big, are so dumb?

And something else!

How come giving cents to priests help souls get out of Purgatory?

Come on, tell me.

There's so much confusion within you, my child.

So much superstition.

A wide variety of animals inhabit Buñuel's films,

reflecting our perplexity when it comes to life,

our desires and our fears.

Jean Epstein, who was Buñuel's master, wrote:

"The isolation that all close-ups cause,

produces some kind of surrealistic object".

Buñuel also uses close-ups to cause distress in the mind of his audience.

I'm sure I must seem like a monster to you.

No, uncle.

But it's a shame life is like this.

Poor thing! She was going to drown.

I have as many rights as if I were a viper.

Or that spider!

To me, insects are life's mystery.

The unfathomable.

That which goes beyond…

But you have a lot of money, give some to the baby.

So cute!

Here…

For the two of you.

Freedom's paradoxes and their ghosts.

Ultimately, I've always pitched man against men.

I admire the man that remains faithful to his conscience,

to anything inspired by it.

Freedom is a ghost, long and hard I've thought about this,

and I've always believed in this.

It is a mist-made ghost.

Man chases it, he believes to have captured it,

but all he ends up with is with some mist in his hands.

I can always prove that my thoughts and my will are not mine to command,

and that my freedom is naught but a ghost.

Freedom… oh freedom, what are they trying to say?

The day before yesterday we went to the opera to see 'Tristán and Isolda'

Was it good?

Admirable!

The soprano was superb!

What a voice! What a presence!

A shame she is so fat…

If you want to keep your beloved one from leaving you for a dumb rich man,

play the national lottery!

The national lottery guarantees the woman's fidelity.

Wives must obey their husbands!

Devil's Ham! Buy it at 'La Perfecta'!

This man is drunk!

And you should shave!

Come, dear. What are you waiting for?

- Go with the boy of the Devil's Ham! - Yes, dad!

No, Mateo! It can't be, don't leave!

You must listen to me!

Mateo you can't leave like this!

Are you afraid?

Thunder scares me.

It won't be God the one to protect us, huh?

And how would you know?

Do you believe in God?

Of course I do.

Watch this then.

Where are you going?

Hey, you hear me?!

Prove that you exist!

I wish he'd throw something at your face!

One! Two! And three!

You see?

That almost fell on top of me!

I'm drawn towards characters with fixed ideas.

Because I am like that myself.

As you must've already noticed.

There you have your people.

From here you can see clearly what they are.

Worms crawling around the floor.

One just wants to squash them with your foot.

How can you say that, Francisco!

That's pure selfishness!

So what?

Selfishness is the essence of a noble soul.

I despise men, you hear me?

If I were God I'd never forgive them!

- Gloria - What?

Do you realise that we're alone?

that no one could stop me from punishing you

What would you say if I grabbed you by the neck?

And I, in His name, forgive you for your sins.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…

Amen.

Peace be with you.

Aim!

Imagination is the only place where humans are free.

Fire!

What was that?

Maybe a hunter?

It's very odd…

I pictured the Pope being executed.

What?!

You can picture anything you want…

But the Pope being executed will never happen.

André Breton wrote:

"The simplest surrealist action is to go to the streets, armed with a gun,

and start to shoot at random against the masses."

Buñuel, like a baroque painter, reminds us of life's vanity,

and he places religion on the frontier with death.

The fact that he is sniffing a flower has no meaning,

or maybe it did once, but I can't recall it anymore.

But, must everything have a meaning?

But who are you?

A worker…

who never rests…

There's millions and more of us there.

Where?

There, tears are useless…

There, regrets are wasted…

There, tears are useless.

And regrets there, are wasted.

Prayers there aren't heard.

Promises for the future aren't allowed there.

Prayers are not listened there.

And promises… are rejected in the future.

Because, once life's final Mument is over,

Because…

Once life's last instant passes…

there is no time left for penance.

Ambiguity is consubstantial to me

because it challenges fixed ideas,

the immutable ones.

Where is the truth?

Mr. Luis affirmed with pessimism:

Us surrealists wanted to change the world,

but we ended up only changing the vitrines

of fashion stores.

That image sums up the plague,

Such a scene cannot be anticipated in the script.

I find myself filming on a lonely street,

almost in ruins.

Suddenly, an image comes to my mind:

a little girl that walks forward dragging a sheet behind her.

Thus, I have an irrational image,

and yet it sums up tragedy.

Whenever I panic due to the demographic explosion,

I picture myself summoning a dozen biologists,

and I give them the final command to unleash upon the planet a scary virus

that would rid it from two billion of its inhabitants.

And of course, I start by saying courageously:

'Even if that virus ends up attacking me.'

Afterwards, in secret, I attempt to pass the buck,

I make a list of people that have to be saved:

some family members, my best friends, the families of my friend's friends…

I start… and I can't finish.

I quit.

With my films, my intention is to disturb

to infringe the rules of conformism

to make people believe that they don't live in the best of worlds.

I'm the most surrealist I've ever been.

After Un Chien Andalou the world has evolved into the absurd.