Red Luis Bunuel

The Spanish Director During Spains Civil War

Jan. 21, 2012

3:34 p.m.

Luis Bunuel's reputation as a director stands on a pair of Surrealist collaborations with Salvador Dali, An Andalusian Dog (1928) and The Golden Age (1930), and such later art house triumphs as Belle de Jour (1967) and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). Many years elapsed in between, yet Bunuel was seldom inactive. The first part of his wandering post-Surrealist career, which brought him from France to his Spanish homeland, to Hollywood and New York, and on to Mexico and France again, is covered in detail by Roman Gubern and Paul Hammond's Luis Bunuel: The Red Years 1929-1939 (University of Wisconsin Press). Through much of the period covered by their biography, Bunuel busied himself making propaganda for the Spanish Republic and apparently dabbled in gun running and other activities during Spain's civil war. Surrealism's totalitarian tendencies proved good preparation for Bunuel's political sympathies; while Surrealist kingpin Andre Breton embraced Trotsky, the director was comfortable among the Stalinists who eventually seized the helm in Spain from democratic reformers. The Red Years is valuable for its careful scrutiny of the surviving evidence, much of it contradicting the small details of earlier histories and, especially, Bunuel's own memories. With careful reasoning and research, Gubern and Hammond pick through the political pieties of previous generations and the self-mythologizing of their subject to arrive at a more complete, nuanced account of a political artist who survived and eventually thrived, in spite of being on the losing side of history during a critical time.