Luis Buñuel
Surrealist film director. Buñuel was born in Calanda, in Aragón province. When 17, he moved to Madrid to study history at the university. He joined to the student's residency, where he later met Salvador Dalí and Federico Garcia Lorca. After finishing his studies, he moved to Paris, where he learned how to direct films from French silent cinema masters.
Influenced by Fritz Lang, he decided to direct his own films. By this time he was also influenced by Surrealism and the Marquis de Sade.
Dalí wrote a script for a very shocking film, 'Un chien andalou', that was quite an event in french intellectual world. This success catched the attention from vicount Charles Noialles, very intersted in arts, who paid his next film: l'Age d'or. This film was a big scandal, being first censored and then forbbiden for almost 50 years. After contacting with Hollywood companies, he started working in France for them. When the spanish civil war started, he supported the repulican government. But before second world war started, he moved to New York.
In the States he started to work in the cinema section from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa). An autobiographical writing by Dalí made him out because he commented that Buñuel was an atheist and a communist. Later he moved to México
In México, in the 1940s, after meeting an actress from his first films in a dinner, he could start directing mainstream films. By this way, he could enter in the mexican film industry and after a while, he could start working in other films more accurated to his own interests and themes. His peak in Mexico was "El Ángel exterminador", released in 1962.
When his return to France, in the mid of the 1960s, he started his most brillant period. Films like 'Belle de jour' and 'The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie' are between his best works.
He died in Mexico DF in July 29th, in the year 1983, when he was 83 years old.
“Si me dijeran: te quedan veinte años de vida, ¿qué te gustaría hacer durante las veinticuatro horas de cada uno de los días que vas a vivir?, yo respondería: dadme dos horas de vida activa y veinte horas de sueños, con la condición de que luego pueda recordarlos; porque el sueño sólo existe por el recuerdo que lo acaricia.”
“A life without memory is no life at all”
“Today`s culture is unfortunately inseparable from economic and military power. A ruling nation can impose its culture and give a worldwide fame to a second-rate writer like (Ernest Hemingway). (John Steinbeck) is important due to American guns. Had (John Dos Passos) and (William Faulkner) been born in Paraguay or in Turkey, who`d read them?”
“Me decía: ¡habrían tenido que hacerme leer a Sade antes que todas las demás cosas!”
“Añadiré —Dalí me lo hizo observar— que los surrealistas eran guapos.”
“Muy nervioso, como es de suponer, yo me situé detrás de la pantalla con un gramófono y, durante la proyección, alternaba los tangos argentinos con Tristán e Isolda. Me había puesto unas piedras en el bolsillo, para tirárselas al público si la película era un fracaso.”
“Tengo que confesar aquí que la admiración que me merece el teatro de Lorca es más bien escasa. Su vida y su personalidad superaban con mucho a su obra, que me parece a menudo retórica y amanerada.”
“Imposible beber sin fumar”
“Si tuviera que enumerar todas las virtudes del alcohol, no acabaría nunca.”
“El profesor señala con el dedo a un alumno y le dice: «¡Refúteme a Buñuel!» Y es cuestión de dos minutos.”
“El bar es para mí un lugar de meditación y recogimiento, sin el cual la vida es inconcebible.”
“The bar . . . is an exercise in solitude. Above all else, it must be quiet, dark, very comfortable - and, contrary to modern mores, no music of any kind, no matter how faint. In sum, there should be no more than a dozen tables, and a client that doesn't like to talk.”
“Salvador Dalí seduced many ladies, particularly American ladies, but these seductions usually consisted of stripping them naked in his apartment, frying a couple of eggs, putting them on the woman's shoulders and, without a word, showing them the door.”
“You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all... Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it we are nothing.”
“God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed.”
“If you were to ask me if I'd ever had the bad luck to miss my daily cocktail, I'd have to say that I doubt it; where certain things are concerned, I plan ahead.”
“I'm still an atheist, thank God.”
“Mas creio que é preciso evitar ver, nessas leis necessárias que nos permitem viver juntos, uma necessidade fundamental, primordial. Parece-me, na realidade, que não é necessário que este mundo exista, que não é necessário que estejamos aqui vivendo e morrendo. Já que somos apenas os filhos do acaso, a terra e o universo poderiam ter continuado sem nós, até à consumação dos séculos. Imagem inimaginável, a de um universo vazio e infinito, teoricamente inútil, que nenhuma inteligência poderia contemplar, que existiria sozinho, caos duradouro, abismo inexplicavelmente privado de vida. Talvez outros mundos, que não conhecemos, sigam assim seu curso inconcebível. Atração pelo caos que às vezes sentimos profundamente em nós mesmos.”
“Fortunately, somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether.”
“Even today, I've no idea what the truth is, or what I did with it.”
“Bound, elbow to elbow, darkness and night entered the dwelling.”
“I can't help feeling that there is no beauty without hope, struggle, and conquest.”
“Age is something that doesn't matter unless you're a cheese”
“The decline of the aperitif may well be one of the most depressing phenomena of our time.”
“Thank God I'm an atheist!”
“Deus e a Pátria são um time imbatível; eles quebram todos os recordes de opressão e derramamento de sangue.”