Luis Bunuel New Readings

Luis Bunuel (1900-83) was one of the world's great film-makers. Always controversial, his first film, Un chien andalou (1928), which he referred to as a 'call to murder', was a savage Surrealist experiment. L'Âge d'or (1930), his second, was banned in Paris after its initial screening led to violent disturbances. Thereafter, his films continued to challenge, provoke and subvert social conventions in their searching analyses of human desire. Luis Bunuel New Readings examines key films and moments from all stages of the director's career: the early years in Spain and France, the middle period in Mexico and the USA, and the return to Europe, where he made late masterpieces like Belle de Jour (1966) and Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie(1972). Twenty years after his death, the Lime is ripe for a re-evaluation of Bunuel's legacy. Through theoretically informed discussions of individual films and dominant tendencies, as well as through more biographically orientated perspectives (including newly discovered correspondence), this book locates and re-appraises Bunuel's films with particular emphasis on the national cinemas and varied cultures with which he was identified. These new readings show that the significance and impact of Bunuel's work remain undiminished by the passage of time.