He was educated in a Jesuit school from 1907 to 1915, a complex experience that would mark him for life. He received the religious and intellectual upbringing typical of the affluent and conservative upper class in the provincial capital of Zaragoza at the turn of the century. They had a happy marriage blessed by seven children, of whom Luis was the oldest. His father, Leonardo Bunuel, made a fortune in Cuba before the Spanish-American War and returned to his home village to marry Maria Portoles, a young woman of standing and property.

It is impossible to understand Bunuel and his cinema without taking into account the circumstances of his life and background, such as his identity as a Spaniard, the Catholicism into which he was born, his crisis of faith in his early Youth, and his adoption of surrealism as a vehicle to channel his artistic impulses.īunuel was born in Calanda in the province of Teruel in the region of Aragon in Northeast Spain, on February 22, 1900. The philosophical dictum, “I am myself and my circumstance” ( Yo soy yo y mi circumstancia), of Jose Ortega y Gasset, the formidable Spanish intellectual whom Bunuel met in Madrid in the 20s, is especially applicable to the filmmaker. In its celebration of the centennial of cinema in 1995, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications included Nazarin-a bold choice-among the 15 films in world cinema praised for their religious values. Even though he renounced Catholicism, it remained the hinge of his life and work.Īnticlerical and blasphemous in a Spanish way, Bunuel used to joke: “I’m an atheist, thank God.” But some of his later works seem to affirm Him by showing the failures of Christian figures, as in Nazarin (1959), Viridiana (1961), and Simon of the Desert ( Simon del Desierto, 1965), or in discussing in an original way the dogmas of the Catholic Church, notably The Milky Way ( La Voie Lacta, 1969). Also, in his life and films, Bunuel never stopped wrestling with God and lashing at the Catholic Church. The work of this Spanish director-32 films in 50 years-marks one of the most provocative uses of cinema to effect a mordant critique of social mores and conventions.

These two scenes-aiming at the jugular of the spectator-open in 1928 and close in 1977 the film career of Luis Bunuel, iconoclast supreme. “ A religious education and surrealism have marked me for life.” ~Luis BunuelĪ man sharpens a razor and slits the eyeball of a young woman a bomb, planted by the Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus, explodes in Paris.

My last sigh bunuel