Luis Buñuel

The amazing Luis Buñuel.

Surrealist for Hire

After his documentary Las Hurdes (1933), Buñuel did not direct another picture for 15 years. This time was spent in other capacities in the film industry, especially an aborted attempt at a Hollywood career (oh, the mind reels at the possibilities there). When he moved to Mexico in the late 1940s, he began a series of cheap melodramas, which may do a disservice to his reputation, if one took the films at face value. His Mexican film career from 1947 to 1960 is generally regarded as his “director for hire” period, in which he did a string of obscure melodramas which belie his reputation as a master Surrealist filmmaker, although at least two of them (Los Olvidados, Nazarin), enjoyed international acclaim. In his wonderful autobiography, My Last Sigh, Buñuel made the curious statement that he was hired for every film he made. In other words, his projects had begun with people approaching him, rather than conceiving them on his own, but he had shaped them into pieces that bear his unique signature. One must dig deeper to find the Buñuel touches in any of his Mexican films, but there they are!