Belle de Jour (1967)

France / Italy, 100 minutes

Director: Luis Buñuel

Writers: Joseph Kessel, Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carriere

Photography: Sacha Vierny

Editor: Louisette Hautecoeur

Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli, Genevieve Page, Pierre Clementi, Iska Khan, Francoise Fabian, Maria Latour, Francisco Rabal, Marcel Charvey

Belle de Jour was sold in 1967 as director and cowriter Luis Buñuel’s “Masterpiece of Erotica.” Catherine Deneuve plays Severine, a young middle-class housewife who seems to be messed up about sex, likely the work once again, per Buñuel, of the Catholic Church. Severine’s sexual interests may or may not lie in taboo directions, BDSM, and degradation, but she has apparently decided her best bet is to present to the world as “frigid”—beautiful, and unattainable. Sha and her husband Pierre (Jean Sorel) sleep in separate beds and she repulses all his advances with sighs and sorrow, which he seems to accept with equanimity. He’s a certain model of ideal husband.

Severine finds an outlet for herself, drawn to it almost by forces beyond her will, as a high-end, “classy” prostitute. She works only in the afternoon, hence her prostitute name, Belle de Jour, literally “beauty of the day.” Presumably this is so she can be home in time to prepare her husband’s dinner. This particular operation takes place off the street, in apartments owned by the house madame Anais (Genevieve Page). No menacing pimps seem to be involved and it feels relatively safe. At first Severine resists the actual work—the undressing, showing her body, physical intimacy. Anais is gentle but firm with her, starting her with the more unobjectionable johns. The sex work seems to be what Severine wants or needs and soon she is a regular with two others, Charlotte (Francoise Fabian) and Mathilde (Maria Latour). We see a few scenes of the fetishes their johns are there to see served. It’s Buñuel and not surprisingly they are bizarre and often surreal, with BDSM themes. There’s even a flashback scene of Severine refusing communion. Ah, Buñuel and the Catholic Church! The eternal romance of opposites attracting.

The Exterminating Angel (1962)

El ángel exterminador, Mexico, 95 minutes

Director: Luis Buñuel

Writers: Luis Buñuel, Luis Alcoriza

Photography: Gabriel Figueroa

Editor: Carlos Savage

Cast: Silvia Pinal, Enrique Rambal, Luis Beristain, Jacqueline Andere, Jose Baviera, Tito Junco, Ofelia Montesco, Claudio Brook, Nadia Haro Oliva

For the record, and FYI, director and cowriter Luis Buñuel has no fewer than six titles in the top 200 of the big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?, a roundup of critical opinion from around the world: Viridiana, #88; The Exterminating Angel (my favorite), #138; Los Olvidados, #139; the inestimable Un Chien Andalou, #149; L’Age d’or, #166; and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (my other favorite), #172. A seventh, Belle de jour, is trailing not far behind at #256. He’s obviously a very big deal among cineastes, partly for his dedication to surrealism and the originality of it, partly for his caustic treatment of religion and capitalism, partly for a prolific, globe-trotting career that saw him making pictures in Spain, France, Mexico, and elsewhere—and partly because he’s pretty good at making movies.

Among other things, The Exterminating Angel shows a lot of skill unrolling the premise. It starts with a dinner party—how many Buñuel pictures involve (and mock) the genteel dinner party, attended by the upper-middle class as they strain after more social class? In fact, the picture is a bit dull in the first third as they gather and work their status symbols, though it is enlivened somewhat by slapstick and sarcasm. For some reason all the servants, including the cooks, are leaving. They can’t explain themselves but only apologize. And they will not stay. But the host and hostess make do and muddle through with the only servant left, a butler. After the dinner the group retires to the parlor for brandy and more polite intercourse. They’re a bit bored but not yet inclined to leave. The hours peter away until finally, around 4 or 5 a.m., the hosts, eager to break it up, offer them rooms in the mansion. But they prefer to undress and bunk down where they are. So do the host and hostess. It’s not until the next morning, when the group wakes and starts thinking about breakfast, that they realize they are somehow trapped there.

L'Age d'Or (1930)

The Golden Age, France, 63 minutes

Director / editor: Luis Buñuel

Writers: Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dali, Marquis de Sade

Photography: Albert Duverger

Music: Luis Buñuel, Georges Van Parys

Cast: Gaston Modot, Lya Lis, Caridad de Laberdesque, Max Ernst, Lionel Salem, Germaine Noizet, Bonaventura Ibanez, Luis Buñuel

Surrealism means never having to say you're sorry, as director, cowriter, and editor Luis Buñuel seeks to show in his 1930 follow-up to the ragingly weird Un Chien Andalou. That short picture remains famous for an eyeball shot that will probably always work for as long as people look at movies. L'Age d'Or does not have anything nearly as memorable—very few movies do, actually—but Buñuel appears to have more confidence about what he is doing as a filmmaker. There's more juice to this one. He is once again working with Salvador Dali and in 1930 you couldn't get much more outré than that, or at least Parisian. Max Ernst is along for the ride as well in a small part.

L'Age d'Or, for one thing, has a much more detectable through-line. There's this couple, see—well, I can't tell you a lot more than that. Gaston Modot is billed as "The Man," Lya Lis as "The Woman." They're in a lot of scenes, together and separately. I didn't say it made sense, I said the movie has a more detectable through-line. Buñuel's loathing of the Catholic Church is often front and center. Pontiffs in full garb and later their skeletons are seen early. And there's something about Rome—stock aerial shots of the city, some locations on the ground. A clip from a documentary about scorpions starts it off. A cow is found in a very nice bed. A horse-drawn cart passes through a fancy indoor social gathering.

The Young and the Damned (1950)

Los olvidados, Mexico, 80 minutes
Director: Luis Buñuel
Writers: Luis Alcoriza, Luis Buñuel
Photography: Gabriel Figueroa
Music: Rodolfo, Halffter, Gustavo Pittaluga
Editor: Carlos Savage
Cast: Roberto Cobo, Alfonso Mejia, Miguel Inclan, Estela Inda, Alma Delia Fuentes, Mario Ramirez

Spanish Surrealist director and cowriter Luis Buñuel was naturalized as a Mexican citizen in 1949, which may account in part for the foray into social realism he takes with The Young and the Damned. Various business considerations no doubt came into play as well. It was probably never easy making a living as a midcentury Spanish Surrealist filmmaker. The movie is better known in cineaste circles by its original name, Los olvidados, which translates literally as "the forgotten ones." I think it bears comparison, as Latino social realism, much more with movies such as City of God or maybe Amores Perros or even Roma than with other pictures in Buñuel's catalog before or after. That would include most famously, perhaps, 1929's Un Chien Andalou and 1972's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, but don't forget Viridiana and The Exterminating Angel from the early '60s. I would class The Young and the Damned more as an outlier, in short, even if it is presently considered Buñuel's second-greatest picture in the critical roundup over at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?

You'd be forgiven for wondering what happened to the Surrealism, but it is actually here, caught briefly in a dream sequence and more generally in the very harsh tenor of this picture (Surrealism, after all, has always been about brainstem perceptions as much as anything). The harshness also suits the social realism, of course. I have no problems with that in theory. I've been fascinated all my life, since at least S.E. Hinton's remarkable novel The Outsiders, with stories of juvenile delinquency, violence, and disaffection. But Buñuel's treatment is so primitive it's almost too much, even in the relatively compressed running time. It's a low-budget affair, obviously, but practically seems to wallow in its conditions, a kind of pornography of despair on some levels. Set in Mexico City, these down-and-outers have zero glamour, no doubt as intended. A surprising amount of time in this picture is devoted to people heaving rocks at one another, and inflicting terrible damage too, including death. They have other ways to fight, and the movie has other themes too, but the rock-throwing may best epitomize the plight Buñuel is depicting here. When you have nothing, and the ground you walk on is stony already, well, what do you think you're supposed to do?

Un Chien Andalou (1929)

France, 16 minutes
Director/editor: Luis Buñuel
Writers: Salvador Dali, Luis Buñuel
Photography: Albert Duverger, Jimmy Berliet
Cast: Simone Mareuil, Pierre Batcheff, Jaume Miravitlles, Salvador Dali, Luis Buñuel

This landmark of Surrealist art, a collaboration between Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali on the precipice of worldwide economic collapse, is short but it stays with you. Director Buñuel and cowriter Dali famously worked to extrude anything of particular meaning that could be taken from it. "No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted," Buñuel wrote. "Nothing, in the film, symbolizes anything." Quite right, and nothing adds up except, intuitively and in flashes, on certain Freudian levels. But some things can be rationally laid at its doorstep. It packs a punch because it saves its best for first—a brief scene in which, through the magic of montage (or editing, or cutting), a woman's eyeball appears to be sliced through by a razor. Among other things it prefigured a common strategy of action and horror pictures, which is to insert a spectacular set piece right up front (Saving Private Ryan, say). In psychological terms, you are thus softened. Shock and numbness soon have hold. In Un Chien Andalou, why a man (it's Buñuel, by the way) would be slicing a woman's eyeball at all is not even a question that occurs to anyone after witnessing it. For many first-time viewers, the remaining minutes of the picture pass in a kind of desperate muddled delirium. What did I just see what? In fact, the eyeball scene, just a matter of seconds, still has the power to make me want to look away and to flinch if I don't. It's the very idea, of course, so naturalistically rendered, that does the work. But the image, however brief, is also viscerally detailed. Even in the few seconds it's onscreen it's readily apparent that it's the eyeball of a dead animal, not the woman, but you do have to be looking at the screen to see it. There are more shocking images that follow, though they tend to pale by comparison: ants crawling in and out of a hole in the palm of a hand, two dead donkeys on a couple of grand pianos, a groping scene that now can seem the most disturbing element in it if you're past the initial shock (this also applies to most of the stuff with animals, for that matter, who were evidently harmed in the making of this picture). These strange images wheel in front of our numbed sensibility and unsliced eyeballs, filling our heads with what? Men dressed in nun's habits (oh that again, Luis), a severed hand making the rounds in a striped box, a butterfly with a marking that might look like a human skull, a mouth wiped right off the face of a man and turned into a woman's armpit hair. "Dream logic"—I suppose that's one way to conceive it. Within the year the world was more worried about things like fascism and a cratered economy, but Un Chien Andalou lives on fresh as ever—fresh, and exceedingly weird.

Viridiana (1961)

Spain / Mexico, 90 minutes
Director: Luis Buñuel
Writers: Julio Alejandro, Luis Buñuel, Benito Perez Galdos
Photography: Jose F. Aguayo
Music: Bach, Mozart, Handel, Gustavo Pittaluga
Editor: Pedro del Rey
Cast: Silvia Panal, Francisco Rabal, Fernando Rey, Jose Calvo, Margarita Lozano, Jose Manuel Martin, Victoria Zinny

I was a little surprised when I realized this is the first movie by director and cowriter Luis Buñuel I've encountered yet on the big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? I've had mixed feelings about the work of the Spanish Surrealist provocateur ever since a 16-mm version of the 16-minute film Un Chien Andalou more or less blew my mind when I saw it in high school at 16. Later viewings of some of his others, including Viridiana, have often occasioned a bewildered confusion that feels like disappointment. Do I have to read a book to get this? Now I wonder if something similar might be going on with critics at large, just by the patterns in the TSPDT list. Buñuel actually has no fewer than seven titles in the top 200, more than any other director at the moment (Alfred Hitchcock is closest with six) but also with the slowest start: Viridiana is presently the highest at only #81, followed by L'Age d'Or at #118, Los Olvidados at #124, Un Chien Andalou at #135, The Exterminating Angel at #143, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie at #152, and Belle de Jour at #197.

When I looked up ranking histories I saw a similar pattern, a kind of generalized slow-motion fall from favor. L'Age d'Or, for example (the one that made me wonder if I should have read a book first), has previously spent time in the top 100, as high as #72, but with overall steady drops. Un Chien Andalou is an exception, with a somewhat erratic journey higher starting at #198—a few years ago it jumped from #165 to #117, though it has fallen off of that recently. Viridiana, in fact, is the only permanent resident to this point in the top 100, reaching as high as #68. That would appear to make it, then, the aggregated consensus choice as Buñuel's best. But we have some idea of how aggregated consensus works, highlighting odd choices (Hitchcock's Vertigo is a similar case), especially when votes are split. In historical terms, Viridiana is actually something more like a comeback picture, making a big splash at Cannes and reminding people how good Buñuel could be as a filmmaker. In turn, that opened doors to contracts and at least two much better pictures by my lights, Exterminating Angel and Discreet Charm.