Un Chien Andalou (1929, dir. Luis Buñuel)

“The simplest surrealist act consists in going into the street with revolvers in your fist and shooting blindly into the crowd as much as possible. Anyone who has never felt the desire to deal thus with the current wretched principle of humiliation and stultification clearly belongs in this crowd himself with his belly at bullet height.”

-André Breton, Second Manifesto of Surrealism (1929)

Marguerite Gance in The Fall of the House of Usher (1928, dir. Jean Epstein) (via) Full film online at Internet Archive.  

“Yes, I hear it, and have heard it. We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them—many, many days ago—yet I dared not—I dared not speak! 

And now—the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart?’—here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul—’I tell you that she now stands without the door!’

The huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust—but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher.”

-Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)

Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dali, and (sister) Ana Maria Dali, circa 1929 (via)

“As a young man, [Salvador Dali] was totally asexual, and forever making fun of friends who fell in love or ran after women - until the day he lost his virginity to Gala & wrote me a 6-page letter detailing, in his own inimitable way, the pleasures of carnal love.

(Gala’s the only woman he ever really made love to. Of course, he’s seduced many, particularly American heiresses; but those seductions usually entailed stripping them naked in his apartment, frying a couple of eggs, putting them on the woman’s shoulders, and, without a word, showing them to the door.)”

-excerpted from Luis Buñuel’s autobiography, My Last Sigh

Simone Mareuil in Un Chien Andalou (1929, dir. Luis Buñuel)

“While spending Christmas with Salvador Dali in Figueras, I suggested to him that we do a film together. He said: ‘Last night I dreamt with ants swarming in my hand.’ And I said: ‘Oh! Man! I dreamt about a cloud cutting the moon and me cutting someone’s eye with a razor.’

We wrote the script in six days. We identified with each other so much that there was no discussion.”

-Buñuel, via

Luis Buñuel on the set of The Milky Way (w/ Edith Scob in her role as the Virgin Mary) (1969, dir. Luis Buñuel) 

“I gave up being religious as an adolescent. But do you think I no longer retain any elements of my Christian formation in my way of thinking? Among other things, such as sacred music, I can be profoundly moved by a ceremony honoring the Virgin, with novices in their white habits and the purity of their appearance.”

(via)

Un Chien Andalou (1929) & Susana (1950), dir. Luis Buñuel

Czech poster art for Belle de Jour (1967, dir. Luis Bunuel) Artist: Karel Machálek

Catherine Deneuve on promotional tour for Belle de Jour (1967, dir. Luis Bunuel)

“I prefer to be associated with Belle de Jour than a lot of other things, frankly. I think it’s a great film. I was very lucky to do films like that, and like Umbrellas of Cherbourg, at a young age. I think it was great luck for an actor to be involved with very important directors young, because it gives you another view of cinema.”

What, in particular, did they teach her? “It’s not what they taught me,” she says, “it’s what I learned through the making of the film. It’s like being with intelligent people - it’s very difficult to say or to know what you’ve learned, because sometimes you learn without them trying to say anything. I suppose you always read things differently, you see things differently, when you’ve done films like that.”

(via)

via Un Chien Andalou (1929, dir. Luis Buñuel) (online here)

“Amusingly enough, a great many psychiatrists and analysts (i.e., film critics) have had a great deal to say about my movies. I’m grateful for their interest, but I never read their articles, because when all is said and done, psychoanalysis (i.e., film criticism), as a therapy, is strictly an upper-class privilege.

Some analysts - in despair, I suppose - have declared me ‘unanalyzable,’ as if I belonged to some other species or had come from another planet (which is always possible, of course). At my age, I let them say whatever they want. I still have my imagination, and in its impregnable innocence it will keep me going until the end of my days.

All this compulsion to ‘understand’ everything fills me with horror.”

-Luis Buñuel, in his autobiography My Last Sigh

Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour (1967, dir. Luis Buñuel)

“Sex without religion is like cooking an egg without salt. Sin gives more chances to desire.”

-Luis Buñuel

“If alcohol is queen, then tobacco is her consort. It’s a fond companion for all occasions, a loyal friend through fair weather and foul. People smoke to celebrate a happy moment, or to hide a bitter regret. Whether you’re alone or with friends, it’s a joy for all the senses. What lovelier sight is there than that double row of white cigarettes, lined up like soldiers on parade and wrapped in silver paper? I love to touch the pack in my pocket, open it, savor the feel of the cigarette between my fingers, the paper on my lips, the taste of tobacco on my tongue. I love to watch the flame spurt up, love to watch it come closer and closer, filling me with its warmth.”

-Luis Buñuel (via), not helping with those “no more smoking” New Year’s resolutions