The Phantom of Liberty
The Phantom of Liberty is one of the most audacious and unconventional films, directed by Luis Buñuel. The Phantom of Liberty may very well be the most accomplished, ambitious and surrealist work of his 54-year film career.
The film surely challenges traditional narrative conventions and at the same time, the film deals with a variety of limits imposed by the law and presents an intense criticism against social institutions.
The devoted surrealist Buñuel acknowledged in his films the presence of potent subconscious forces of a violent & sexual nature.
The Phantom of Liberty show how these forces, which represent the true human nature, are affected by moral, religious and social points.
The Phantom of Liberty, there are virtually no social institutions left untouched by Buñuel’s ironic and surreal criticisms.
The most striking feature of The Phantom of Liberty is its unconventional narrative structure. The film comprises roughly 12 distinctive episodes with separate protagonists. These episodes are linked together in a unique way. For example, the film opens with some events that take place at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Then, we discover that a nanny is reading these events from a book. The nanny works for a bourgeois gentleman’s family, who is having hallucinatory dreams. The Phantom of Liberty resembles a relay race, where the narrative’s center of attention is passed, baton-like, from a character in one sequence to a character in the next.
Un Chien Andalou was the calling card of two desperate, unknown Spanish artists. It “came from an encounter between two dreams.”
The film illustrates Buñuel’s awesome ability as a fledgling filmmaker and served as a calling card for Buñuel and Dali into the elite club of the surrealists. After just over seventy years, the remarkable opening sequence still retains its power: “Once upon a time.”
This is a first film by two relatively young intellectuals and it is striking. Yet for all its critical and financial success, it never truly achieved its aim of outraging or affronting middle-class sensibilities. Although there are reports of disruptions of screenings, these seem to be based on false memories of events surrounding the release of Buñuel’s next film, L’Age d’Or (1930).
Un Chien Andalou was, as were many of Buñuel’s later films, a huge success amongst the French bourgeoisie, and a parallel can be seen between the careers of Buñuel and Chabrol. Chabrol is a self-confessed bourgeois who hates the complacency of his class. His films are deeply critical of the bourgeoisie yet his films have always benefited from the patronage of the middle-class. The same can be said of Buñuel. This can also be seen in Buñuel’s uneasy relationship with the Catholic church.
n Chien Andalouillustrates Buñuel’s obsessions and is replete with references to his upbringing. Recurrent reference points are surrealism and religion, as already mentioned, seasoned with violence and a willingness to shock. Images from Spain appear regularly throughout his work as do images of the poor and suffering. It was Buñuel’s only silent film and perhaps for this reason appears more dynamic than his other works. Along with L’Age d’Or and Las Hurdes (1933), the film is very explicit and confrontational.
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