Fecha:
27/10/2017
Buñuel’s films continue to fascinate scholars, cinephiles, students, critics, and others. In Javier Herrera’s excellent compilation in the first of what he promises will be three volumes of scripts, cuttings, letters, scribbles, notes, photos, and paraphernalia collected over the years by Buñuel, we get a sense of the man himself as ‘conservador’ (not, of course, in the political sense), or collector; still an entomologist at heart, now a student not only of insects but also of his own life and career. The drive to record, to preserve, to understand, and even, in due course, to live up to his own public image, begins in boyhood when, from 1913 to 1914, he keeps a ‘Resumen de mi estancia in Calanda’. The entries here on friendship, boxing, ‘tertulias’, hunting, and practical jokes are a prelude to what would prove to be some of the characteristic features of his distinctive art. Buñuel’s archives were sold by his family to the Filmoteca Nacional in Madrid. It was there, as Chief Librarian, that Javier Herrera worked on and catalogued this vast amount of material. The fruits of this Herculean labour are a first volume consisting of eighteen chapters dedicated to films, largely made in Mexico, beginning with Los olvidados (1950) and ending with Viridiana (1961). The material is catalogued expertly by Herrera. He guides the reader with a sure touch, noting the importance or significance of each entry, pausing to highlight especially those items that bear some comment from Buñuel himself. What emerges is an unsuspected view of a Buñuel seemingly less indifferent in private than in public in the opinion of critics, academics, and others. An especially pleasing review was Dilys Powell’s appreciation on its release of Los olvidados in The Sunday Times. Elsewhere, he approves of critics who acknowledge his direction of actors. The reviewer of The Times is singled out for praise for commenting on the performances of the actors in The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (Ensayo de un crimen, 1955) which, Herrera notes, Buñuel appreciated ‘ya que si había algo que pocas veces se le aplaudía era precisamente la dirección de actores, razón por la que apreció mucho las críticas de Bazin y de R. M. Arland’ (p. 66).
Of equal interest are Buñuel’s comments about his own films. In a letter to José Rubia Barcia, he records his delight at the commercial success of his comedy El gran calavera (1949), but he is eager to start work on a completely different sort of film, Los olvidados, one that he hopes will be ‘algo excepcional en la actual producción internacional. Es dura, fuerte, sin la más mínima concesión al público. Realista, pero con una línea oculta de poesía feroz y a ratos erótica’ (p. 89). El gran calavera was one of his bread-and-butter efforts (undertaken to finance more personal projects), fascinating films, all too often, however, neglected on their release by critics looking for the ‘real’ Buñuel.
The bread-and-butter category includes films like Robinson Crusoe (1954). Buñuel comments on the reasons that attracted him to the project. Though he found the novel uninspiring, its story of a Northern European’s collapsing sense of superiority through a shared life with a native Islander proved irresistible (p. 171). The film, for which he was paid what was even by the standards of the day a paltry $10,000, was enthusiastically received in Spain, where, among its admirers, writing under the pseudonym of ‘David’ for the Heraldo de Aragón, was a certain budding film-maker, José Luis Borau. In Mexico, where it was premiered in 1955, it outpaced Seven Brides for Seven Brothers!
The volume is a rich mine of information and insights about Buñuel’s life and art. From Cocteau’s misgivings about El (1952), to scribbles and alterations to the technical script of Viridiana, there is so much here for admirers of Buñuel’s films to savour. In a 1960 entry we read that he lists his favourite films, in this order, as Los olvidados, El, Nazarín (1958), and The Young One (1960). In his autobiography, Mon dernier soupir (1982), co-written with Jean-Claude Carrière, he seems proudest of his later films. Luis Buñuel en su archivo has whetted our appetites for the promised later ones, and more insight into the life and art of one of the world’s greatest film directors. These volumes will be indispensable guides to all who admire, study, value, or love Buñuel’s extraordinary films.