Old Hollywood
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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)