An Unspeakable Betrayal: Selected Writings of Luis Bunuel FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Buñuel is a filmmaker I have been stylistically haunted and influenced by for a very long time. After reading this collection of essays, some of which have never been published before, I am even more enthralled by this man. He remains my favorite voice of the surrealists."-Gus Van Sant
"This lively and diverse selection of Buñuel's literary work should provide the American reader with a much greater understandiing of the man and his work, and with hours of enjoyment as well."-Julie Jones, University of New Orleans
"Buñuel didn't like to put words on paper, but thankfully he did, revealing the sly, shy, quirky, passionate, unpredictable genius whose superbly subversive films were everything but shy. This trove of reluctant writings is a rare and historical treat."-Charles Champlin, retired arts editor, Los Angeles Times
Author Biography:Luis Buñuel (1900-1983) is regarded as one of the most accomplished directors in the history of cinema. His celebrated collaboration with Dalíin 1928 was followed by a career as a filmmaker that spanned fifty years. Garrett White is a translator and film and art journalist. He translated and wrote the introduction for Blaise Cendrars's Hollywood:Mecca of the Movies (California, 1995).
SYNOPSIS
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Although Luis Buñuel, one of the great filmmakers of the century, was notoriously reluctant to discuss his own work in public, he wrote—and wrote well—on many subjects over the years. This collection proceeds chronologically, from poetry and short stories written in Buñuel's youth in Spain to an essay written in 1980, not long before his death. Newly translated into English, the writings offer startling insights into the filmmaker's life and thought.
The earliest pieces came well before Buñuel joined the Surrealist movement in Paris and created the landmark film Un chien andalou with Salvador Dalí. Yet these and the early Surrealist writings reveal the inventiveness of the mind that would later create such masterpieces of cinema as L'Age d'or, Los olvidados, Viridiana, The Milky Way, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, and That Obscure Object of Desire.
Later writings, which include screenplays and reflections on his own and others' films, illuminate many aspects of Buñuel's career, as well as the ways of thinking and perceiving that underlie his unique cinematic style. The final essay by this extraordinary artist sums up his view of the world—still vibrant and full of contradictions—at the end of his life.
FROM THE CRITICS
Sunday Tribune (Dublin)
This book will be treasured by anyone who cares about cinema.
Artforum's Bookforum
A lovely, startling grab bag of jokes, insights, recollected dreams, superbly grave mini-essays, and general bits and pieces retrieved from Bunuel's life.
Publishers Weekly
Bu uel (1900-1983) is familiar to English speakers as a pathbreaking Spanish filmmaker heavily influenced by surrealism and Marxism; his work also, of course, helped to define these movements. Less well-known are his numerous writings; most of the pieces in this assemblage have not appeared in English until now. In this collection, Bu uel eloquently proves to be an intellectual and an ideologue and a jokester as well. Though a "man of silence," according to Jean-Claude Carri re in his foreword, his words speak strongly throughout, even when the difficulties of translation from both Spanish and French are evident. (In "Land Without Bread," Bu uel writes that he was attracted to the "incredible region" of Las Hurdes "by its intense drama, its terrible poetry.") Written between 1922 and 1980 (though the majority date from the '20s), the entries--short plays, scripts, stories and poems as well as theoretical pieces--all share Bu uel's distinctively odd yet keenly perceptive interest in surrealism, class, theater, cinema and autobiography. His silly, and very surrealist, sensibility (in "Hamlet" he offers a campy, melodramatic re-rendering of the play) shows up as often as his abilities as a passionate visionary (in "Cinema as an Instrument of Poetry" he writes that "in the hands of a free spirit, the cinema is a magnificent and dangerous weapon"). (Mar.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|
Thomson - Bookforum
Bunuel was not a writer—never wanted to be—yet he could hardly put pen to paper without revealing himself. Whether you already know the great films or their eerie pleasured await you still, this book is indispensable. As you slip from one fragment to another, carried along only by the rules and glide of reverie, you are learning how to watch the films...An Unspeakable Betrayal is the opposite of its title: It sustains the faith.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
Bunel is a filmmaker I have been stylistically haunted and influenced by for a very long time. After reading this collection of essays, some of which have never been published before, I am even more enthralled by this man. He remains my favorite voice of the surrealists.
— Gus Van Sant
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