Luis Bunuel: New Readings

A reappraisal of Luis Bunuel's cinema, through theoretically informed discussions of individual films and dominant tendencies.

Luis Bunuel (1900-83) was one of the world's great filmmakers. Always controversial, his first film, Un Chien Andalou (1928), which he referred to as a 'call to murder', was a savage Surrealist experiment. L'Age d'Or (1930), his second, was banned in Paris after its initial screening, which had 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 ranges widely over 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).

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 reappraises Bunuel's films with particular emphasis on the national cinemas and varied cultures with which he was identified. These new readings show that Bunuel's significance and impact remain undiminished by the passage of time.