In this blog post, we’ll explore the life and body of work of Luis Buñuel, the master of Surrealist cinema, as well as the significance his films have had on modern film history.

About Luis Buñuel

To understand Surrealist works, one must first have a basic understanding of Surrealism. Surrealism is a literary and artistic movement that opposes rationalism and naturalism; it seeks to reveal irrational perceptions and the world of the subconscious, pursuing new forms of expression that transcend existing aesthetic standards.
The overarching concept of Surrealism is avant-garde art. Avant-garde art refers to an innovative artistic movement that constantly transforms existing artistic concepts and explores new possibilities. Today, the term is used as a broad concept encompassing various experimental artistic trends, rather than being limited to a specific school or clear criteria. Subsequently, avant-garde art developed around two main pillars: Surrealism and abstract art.
Before examining the body of work of Luis Buñuel, there is one point to keep in mind. Along with Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard, he is one of the Spanish masters who built the most distinctive personal worlds in the history of cinema.
The individuality referred to here does not simply mean originality. He placed the utmost importance on images that emerged through unconscious associations based on his own memories, and he devoted all his energy to exploring how such images spoke to him. Therefore, when watching his films, it is more important to accept the images and sensations conveyed by the screen without prejudice, rather than simply trying to understand the narrative’s causal relationships.
His works are rooted in Surrealism and express an original fusion of artistic experimentation, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Marxist social criticism. Since his body of work is not yet widely known in South Korea, I hope this article will be of some help in understanding Luis Buñuel.

His Life (Biography)

February 22, 1900: Born in Calanda, Teruel, Aragon, Spain, as the son of a wealthy landowner.
1906–1915: Studied at a Jesuit school in Zaragoza.
1917–1920: Continued his studies while living in a student dormitory in Madrid.
1920–1924: He studied at the University of Madrid, where he socialized with artists who would later become leading figures in Spain, such as Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca. Through the university’s film club, he developed an interest in cinema.
1922: He began contributing articles to literary magazines.
1925: He went to France to study film and worked as an assistant director under Jean Epstein.
1926: He served as assistant director on Jean Epstein’s ‘Mauprat’.
1927: Served as assistant director on Mario Nalpas’s ‘La Sirène des Tropiques’.
1928: Served as assistant director on Jean Epstein’s ‘La Chute de la maison Usher’.
1929: Co-directed ‘Un Chien Andalou’ with his friend Salvador Dalí and joined the Paris Surrealist group.
1930: Released ‘L’Age d’Or’ and subsequently visited Hollywood after signing a contract with MGM.
1931: Returned to Paris.
1932: He directed ‘Las Hurdes (Land Without Bread)’. Afterward, his filmmaking activities slowed down for a while.
1933–1935: In Paris and Spain, he worked on foreign-language dubbing for Paramount and Warner Bros. films, and while serving as executive director of the Madrid-based Filmofono studio, he directed musicals and comedy films. He also served as production manager on ‘The Grumpy Mr. Quinten’ and ‘The Daughter of Juan Simón’.
1936: He served as production manager on ‘Who Will Love Me?’ and ‘Sentry, Be on Guard!’.
1937: He served as executive producer for the documentaries ‘Spain ’37’ and ‘The Loyal Spanish Army’, and co-wrote the narration with Pierre Unique.
1938: After the Spanish Civil War, he moved to Hollywood and worked as a technical advisor for pro-Republican film studios. He prepared a documentary on the Civil War under MGM’s direction, but halted the project as the Franco regime’s victory became certain.
1939–1942: He worked at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
1940: He produced an anti-Nazi film using newsreel footage, but it was never released. He also participated in the production of propaganda films related to the Vatican and the U.S. military.
1944–1946: At Warner Bros. in Hollywood, he was in charge of dubbing foreign-language versions of American films. He was initially slated to direct ‘The Beast with Five Fingers’, but ultimately handed the reins to Robert Flory; when a project he was pursuing in France fell through, he headed to Mexico.
1947–1960: He continued his active filmmaking career, primarily in Mexico.
1947: He directed ‘Gran Casino’.
1949: He directed ‘El Gran Calavera’.
1950: He directed ‘Los Olvidados’ and won the Best Director Award and the International Critics’ Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
1950: He directed ‘Susana’.
1951: He directed ‘The Con Man’s Daughter’ and ‘A Woman Without Love’.
1952: Directed ‘Subida al cielo’ (‘Ride to Heaven’), winning the Avant-Garde Film Award at the Cannes Film Festival.
1952: Directed ‘Strange Passion’ and ‘The Beast’.
1953: Directed ‘Journey on the Phantom Train’.
1954: Directed ‘The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe’, ‘River of Death’, and ‘The Abyss of Passion’.
1955: Directed ‘Archivaldo’s Criminal Life’ and ‘Dawn’.
1956: Directed ‘Death in the Garden’ and ‘Nazarín’, and won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for ‘Nazarín’.
1959: Directed ‘The Republic of Sin’.
1960: Directed ‘The Island of Shame’.
1961: Returned to Spain at the invitation of the Spanish government and directed ‘Viridiana’, for which he won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
1962: Directed ‘The Exterminating Angel’.
1964: Directed ‘The Diary of a Chambermaid’.
1965: Directed ‘Simón del desierto’ and won the Silver Lion at the Venice International Film Festival.
1967: Directed ‘Belle de Jour’ and won the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival.
1969: Directed ‘The Milky Way’.
1970: Directed ‘Tristana’.
1972: Directed ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’ and won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (then known as the Best Foreign Language Film Award).
1974: Directed ‘The Illusion of Freedom’.
1977: Directed ‘The Obscure Object of Desire’.
July 29, 1983: He passed away in Mexico City, Mexico.

Filmography

‘Un Chien Andalou’ (16 min, France, 1929)
Screenplay: Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí
Producer and Editor: Luis Buñuel
‘The Golden Age’ (60 min., France, 1930)
Screenplay: Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí
Editor and Music: Luis Buñuel
‘Land Without Bread’ (30 min., Spain, 1932)
Screenplay: Luis Buñuel
Original Story and Commentary: Rafael Sánchez Ventura, Pierre Unik
Producer and Editor: Luis Buñuel
‘The Grand Casino’ (85 min., Mexico, 1947)
Screenplay: Mauricio Magdaleno, Mitchell Weber
‘The Womanizer’ (92 min., Mexico, 1949)
Screenplay: Janet Alcorisa, Luis Alcorisa, Adolfo Torado
‘The Forgotten’ (85 min., Mexico, 1950)
Screenplay: Luis Alcorisa, Luis Buñuel
‘Susana’ (86 min., Mexico, 1950)
Screenplay: Luis Buñuel, Jaime Salvador
Based on the novel of the same name by Manuel Leach
‘The Con Man’s Daughter’ (78 min., Mexico, 1951)
Screenplay: Janet Alcorisa, Luis Alcorisa, Juan de la Cabada
Based on the play of the same name by Carlos Arniches and Antonio Estremera
‘The Woman Without Love’ (85 min., Mexico, 1951)
Screenplay: Luis Buñuel, Jaime Salvador
Based on the novel ‘Pierre and Jean’ by Guy de Maupassant
‘Taking the Bus in Mexico’ (85 min., Mexico, 1952)
Screenplay: Manuel Altoragire, Luis Buñuel, Juan de la Cabada, Lilia Solano Galeana
‘Strange Passion’ (100 min., Mexico, 1952)
Screenplay: Luis Buñuel, Luis Alcorisa
Based on the novel by Mercedes Pinto
‘The Beast’ (81 min., Mexico, 1952)
Screenplay: Luis Alcorisa, Luis Buñuel
‘A Journey on the Phantom Train’ (90 min., Mexico, 1953)
Screenplay: Luis Alcoriza, Juan de la Cabada, José Rebueltas
Based on the novel of the same name by Mauricio de la Serna
‘The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe’ (90 min., Mexico, 1954)
Screenplay: Hugo Butler, Luis Buñuel
Based on the novel ‘Robinson Crusoe’ by Daniel Defoe
‘The River of Death’ (91 min., Mexico, 1954)
Screenplay: Luis Alcorisa, Luis Buñuel
Based on the novel by Miguel Álvarez Acosta
‘The Abyss of Passion’ (91 min., Mexico, 1954)
Screenplay: Julio Alejandro, Luis Buñuel, Arduino Maiuri
Based on the novel ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë
‘The Criminal Life of Archivaldo’ (90 min., Mexico, 1955)
Screenplay: Luis Buñuel, Eduardo Ugarte, Rodolfo Usigli
‘Dawn’ (102 min., France/Italy, 1955)
Screenplay: Luis Buñuel, Jean Perri, Emmanuel Roble
‘Death in the Garden’ (104 min., France/Mexico, 1956)
Screenplay: Luis Alcoris, Gabriel Arru, Luis Buñuel, José André Lacour, Raymond Kno
‘Nazarín’ (94 min., Mexico, 1958)
Screenplay: Julio Alejandro, Luis Buñuel, Emilio Carbajado, Benito Pérez Galdós
‘The Republic of Sin’ (109 min., France/Mexico, 1959)
Screenplay: Luis Alcorisa, Luis Buñuel, Charles Dora, Louis Sapin
Based on the novel of the same name by Henri Castillou
‘The Island of Shame’ (95 min., Mexico/U.S., 1960)
Screenplay: Hugo Butler, Luis Buñuel
Based on the novel by Peter Mattison
‘Viridiana’ (90 min., Spain/Mexico, 1961)
Screenplay: Julio Alejandro, Luis Buñuel
‘The Exterminating Angel’ (95 min., Mexico, 1962)
Screenplay: Luis Alcorisa, Luis Buñuel
Based on an unpublished play by José Bergamín
‘The Diary of a Chambermaid’ (97 min., France/Italy, 1964)
Screenplay: Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carrière
Based on the novel of the same name by Octave Mirbeau
‘Simon of the Desert’ (45 min., Mexico, 1965)
Screenplay: Julio Alejandro, Luis Buñuel
‘Sévérine’ (100 min., France/Italy, 1967)
Screenplay: Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carrière
Based on the novel of the same name by Joseph Kessel
‘The Milky Way’ (98 min., France, West Germany, Italy, 1969)
Screenplay: Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carrière
‘Tristana’ (95 min., Spain, Italy, France, 1970)
Screenplay: Julio Alejandro, Luis Buñuel
Based on the novel of the same name by Benito Pérez Galdós
‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’ (105 min., France, Italy, Spain, 1972)
Screenplay: Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carrière
‘The Illusion of Freedom’ (104 min., France, 1974)
Screenplay: Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carrière
‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’ (103 min., France/Spain, 1977)
Screenplay: Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carrière
Based on the novel ‘The Woman and the Puppet’ by Pierre Louÿs
Luis Buñuel directed a total of 32 films.

Surrealism

Surrealism is a literary and artistic movement that opposed rationalism and naturalism, seeking new forms of expression beyond existing aesthetics and morality by exploring irrational perception and the world of the subconscious. It is regarded as a representative avant-garde art movement that unfolded primarily in France for about 20 years, from around 1919—immediately after the end of World War I—until the start of World War II. It exerted the broadest influence among various avant-garde art movements, including Dadaism and Futurism, and has established itself as one of the most important artistic movements in 20th-century art history.
Fundamentally, Surrealism sought to transcend the boundaries of human experience by combining reality and dreams, as well as the conscious and the unconscious, to present a new perspective on reality. This endeavor was also an artistic experiment aimed at reaching an absolute and transcendent reality.
Surrealism was directly influenced by Dadaism, and the term “Surréalisme” originated from Guillaume Apollinaire’s play ‘The Breasts of Terezia’. However, it was André Breton who systematized it as an artistic movement. In the “Surrealist Manifesto” published in 1924, he defined Surrealism as “pure psychological automatism, which expresses the actual workings of thought without the control of reason or aesthetic and moral preconceptions.”
Breton explained that the purpose of Surrealism was to integrate the contrasting worlds of dreams and reality into a single absolute reality. Therefore, Surrealism can be described as an attempt to reject the dominance of reason and consciousness and to express the world of the human unconscious through various artistic experiments.
That same year, Breton, along with Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard, and others, founded the magazine ‘The Surrealist Revolution’. Subsequently, following the publication of the Second Manifesto in 1929, the movement split into a group advocating for social revolution and a group pursuing pure art; in 1930, the magazine’s name was changed to ‘Surrealism in the Service of the Revolution’.
In 1925, the first International Surrealist Exhibition was held in Paris, featuring participants such as Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico, André Masson, and Man Ray. Subsequently, the 1938 International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris marked the movement’s peak; although its scale diminished after World War II, Surrealism continued to thrive in various forms.
The literary foundations of Surrealism included Rimbaud, Baudelaire, and Lautréamont, while in the visual arts, Hieronymus Bosch, Arcimboldo, Francisco Goya, Odilon Redon, and Giorgio de Chirico are regarded as important precursors. Marc Chagall is also cited as a painter deeply connected to Surrealism due to his fantastical and original style.
Surrealist artists were greatly influenced by Freud’s psychoanalysis. Based on the concept that the human unconscious reveals latent desires and imaginings beyond the control of reason, they developed various creative techniques, including automatic writing.
Surrealist poets wrote using automatic writing, while painters such as Joan Miró, Jean Arp, André Masson, and Max Ernst created new visual expressions by combining frottage with dream imagery. However, since paintings and sculptures are difficult to complete through pure automatic writing alone, a certain level of conscious work was inevitably required. For this reason, dreams and “found objects” became established as important modes of expression.
The most significant characteristic of Surrealist painting lies not in simply depicting dreams, but in juxtaposing objects that are not logically connected to convey the emotions and atmosphere inherent in dreams.
Furthermore, Surrealist painters detached objects from their original functions to imbue them with new meanings; this approach was also influenced by Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia. In particular, Salvador Dalí and René Magritte advanced Surrealist painting by combining realistic depictions with surreal themes.
Dali, Man Ray, Hans Bellmer, and others developed various expressive techniques that evoked subconscious associations; Dali, in particular, sought to realistically express irrational imagination through his “paranoid-critical method.”
Surrealist objects are things that have been separated from their original practicality and transformed into artistic subjects.
Surrealism spread beyond painting to various fields, including theater, film, photography, and commercial art. The aesthetics of this movement were theoretically established by French poets such as Breton, Éluard, and Pierre Reverdy. Breton outlined the movement’s direction through two “Surrealist Manifestos” published in 1924 and 1929, and in 1928, he also published ‘Painting and Surrealism’.
In 1926, the Surrealist Gallery opened, and large-scale Surrealist exhibitions were held in London in 1936 and in Paris in 1947.
Although enthusiasm for Surrealism gradually waned after the 1930s, it did not disappear entirely. Even today, Surrealism continues to exert a lasting influence on various fields, including contemporary art, film, and literature, and is regarded as one of the most significant art movements in 20th-century art history.

Surrealist Film

Surrealism is an artistic movement that originated in literature and spread to various artistic fields—including visual art, music, theater, and film—exerting a profound influence on 20th-century art as a whole. Ideologically, it was influenced by Dadaism, which originated in Switzerland, and was systematized as an artistic movement following the publication of the “Surrealist Manifesto” by André Breton in 1924.
While Dadaism sought the thorough rejection and deconstruction of existing orders and value systems, Surrealism evolved toward exploring the human psyche through the realms of dreams, madness, and the unconscious. Film critics regard the movement’s earnest exploration of the human unconscious and subconscious as one of its greatest achievements.
Due to these characteristics, Surrealism was also heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis.
During the 1920s and 1930s, films with surrealist tendencies were produced in great numbers. Notable examples include ‘Un Chien Andalou’ (A Dog of Andalusia), co-created by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí; Luis Buñuel’s ‘L’Époque d’Or’ (The Golden Age); and Jean Cocteau’s ‘Orphée’ (Orpheus). These works remain indispensable references whenever surrealist cinema is discussed.

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989)

Salvador Dalí is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, having turned his very life into a work of art. He is also a leading painter who embodied the Surrealist movement through the most intense visual language.
The French daily ‘Le Monde’ once remarked, “It is difficult to imagine the face and colors of the 20th century without Dalí.” While traditional painting had been limited to expressing the realm of consciousness, he was the figure who actively brought the realm of the unconscious into his paintings. His work, which combined psychoanalysis with art, opened new horizons for modern art.
In an era that valued only reason and rationality, he sublimated irrationality, imagination, and the inner contradictions of humanity into art. For this reason, Dalí is regarded as a unique artist who cannot be simply labeled an eccentric or a oddball.
Born in Figueres, Spain, in 1904, he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. During his time there, he constantly challenged the school’s authority and the established order, eventually leading to his expulsion.
After moving to Paris in 1928, he actively engaged with Surrealist painters and poets; the following year, he held his first solo exhibition and was formally admitted to the Surrealist group by André Breton.
That same year, he met Gala, the wife of poet Paul Éluard, and made her his lifelong companion and model; from then on, Gala became the most important source of inspiration in his artistic world.
Dali referred to his unique creative method as the “method of maniacal criticism.” This technique sought to express irrational fantasies through objective and realistic imagery; he garnered significant attention when he introduced his methodology during a lecture at the Sorbonne in 1955.
In the late 1930s, he began to show an interest in Renaissance classicism, and even after being expelled from the Surrealist group, he continued his prolific artistic career while exploring topics such as atomic science and Catholic mysticism.
In 1974, he established his own museum, the Teatre-Museu Dalí, in his hometown of Figueres, and in 1978, he was elected a member of the French Academy of Fine Arts. After Gala’s death in 1982, he lived in seclusion at Púbol Castle, where he passed away in 1989.
He left behind numerous masterpieces, including ‘Self-Portrait’, ‘The Persistence of Memory’, ‘Portrait of Gala’, ‘Spain’, and ‘Leda Atomica’. Furthermore, ‘Un Chien Andalou’ (1929) and ‘L’Époque d’Or’ (1930), which he co-produced with his friend Luis Buñuel, are regarded as works of significant importance in the history of cinema.

‘Un Chien Andalou’ (1929)

The shock of this film’s opening sequence stems from the directness of the images themselves.
Audiences at the time were deeply shocked by the scene in which a woman’s eye is slit open with a razor blade. Even today, while it is explained that this scene was a special effect using a calf’s eye rather than a real human eye, the visual impact of the scene remains intense.
Buñuel and Dalí did not use any special effects or mechanical devices. Just two images—a close-up of the woman’s face and a close-up of her eye being sliced open—are connected through direct montage, launching a frontal assault on the audience’s gaze.
Meanwhile, the woman’s eyes on screen, unable to gaze upon anything, become the victim of the razor blade. Conversely, the audience in front of the screen experiences their own visual desires being attacked in return. By shattering the audience’s gaze, Buñuel and Dali shake the very foundation of the visual pleasure traditionally provided by cinema.
These two images—the razor blade and the eye—combine with the numerous images that follow to create a vast structure of desire and violence. The scene of clouds crossing the full moon bears a visual resemblance to the scene of the eye being sliced open, and the man’s violence is linked in such a way that it appears to occur naturally.
The film presents no specific causal relationship for the man’s act of slashing the woman’s eye. Instead, the audience naturally associates the man’s sadistic desire with the symbol of womanhood through the images of the full moon and clouds.
Subsequently, the screen is filled with a ceaseless succession of seemingly unconnected images: a severed hand, ants crawling across a palm, and a mysterious death. The severed hand symbolizes the fear of castration, the ants represent sexual anxiety, and death further highlights the lack of desire.
Ultimately, the woman is transformed into an object meant to fill this void, and sexual desire is presented not as beautiful eroticism but as something that has degenerated into excess, violence, and vulgar lust. Scenes such as the one where the breasts dissolve into another image, or the scene where a piano is dragged alongside a dead donkey, serve as prime examples of these surrealist symbols.
The scenes that follow stimulate the audience’s unconscious through the collision and association of images rather than through a logical narrative progression. Much like an experience in a dream, time, space, and the characters’ actions do not follow a consistent causal relationship, and disparate images follow one another in an endless succession. This structure serves as the best example of the core characteristics pursued by surrealist cinema.
‘Un Chien Andalou’ is a work that left a profound mark on film history by deconstructing conventional cinematic grammar and visually embodying the world of the unconscious. This is why it is still regarded today as one of the most representative examples of surrealist cinema.

‘The Golden Age’ (1930)

‘The Golden Age’ is the second film in which Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí collaborated, following ‘Un Chien Andalou’. However, this time, the film goes beyond the mere shock value of images to focus on directly criticizing religion, bourgeois society, morality, and authority itself.
The film centers on the process by which a loving couple is constantly torn apart by social institutions and power. Yet even this narrative does not follow a conventional structure. As reality, fantasy, desire, and repression intertwine, the audience is led to experience a sensation akin to wandering through a dream.
In particular, the film features very explicit satire directed at the Catholic Church, the aristocracy, and state power. Such expressions were highly radical for the time, and immediately after its screening, French far-right groups even stormed theaters and vandalized the film.
Ultimately, the French government banned the film’s screening, and ‘L’Époque d’Or’ remained officially unavailable for decades. However, over time, the film has been reevaluated as a symbol of freedom of expression and a masterpiece of surrealist cinema.
Through this film, Buñuel argues that human desire is constantly suppressed by social institutions, religion, and morality, and that such suppression itself makes people even more miserable. This perspective became a central theme that recurred in nearly all of his subsequent works.

‘The Forgotten Ones’ (1950)

While many people remember Luis Buñuel solely as a surrealist director, his body of work extends far beyond surrealism.
‘The Forgotten Ones’ is a film that realistically depicts the lives of children living in Mexican slums. The film soberly portrays the lives of boys living in an environment where poverty, violence, and crime have become part of daily life.
In this film, Buñuel does not romanticize the socially vulnerable. Rather, he depicts—in a matter-of-fact yet brutally realistic manner—how extreme poverty destroys humanity.
Midway through the film, there is a scene where the protagonist has a dream; in this sequence, Buñuel’s signature surrealist imagery is strongly evident. His directorial style—which blends reality with the unconscious and symbolism in a natural way—remains alive in this film as well.
‘The Forgotten Ones’ is also the film that earned Buñuel the Best Director Award at the 1951 Cannes Film Festival. This achievement marked the beginning of his return to the spotlight as a world-renowned master.

‘Viridiana’ (1961)

‘Viridiana’ is one of Luis Buñuel’s most representative works and the film that most clearly illustrates his critical perspective on religion.
Viridiana, who was living in a convent to become a nun, visits her uncle’s mansion temporarily at his request. However, she experiences an unexpected incident there and subsequently begins to devote her life to helping the poor.
Yet her good intentions yield results that are the exact opposite of what she expected. The people she helps betray her ideals, and ultimately, everything descends into chaos and ruin.
In particular, the scene of the beggars’ feast toward the end of the film is famous as a parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” This scene, which bitingly satirizes religious authority and hypocrisy, is considered one of the most famous scenes in film history.
Although this film won the Palme d’Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival, it also faced strong criticism from the Vatican and was banned from screening in Spain.

‘The Exterminating Angel’ (1962)

‘The Exterminating Angel’ is one of Luis Buñuel’s masterpieces, a work that satirizes human civilization and social hypocrisy in the most original way.
The film begins as a group of upper-class guests, after finishing a dinner party at a mansion, experience strange phenomena. Although no one has locked them in, the attendees are unable to leave the room for unknown reasons.
At first, everyone remains calm, but as time passes, supplies of water and food run low, and human reason and dignity gradually crumble. The people who once showed consideration for one another become consumed by desire and fear, turning violent, and the masks of social status and refinement are stripped away one by one.
Buñuel presents just a single surreal premise and then relentlessly observes human nature within it. The characters are ultimately unable to explain why they cannot escape, and the film itself offers no rational explanation.
This work is regarded as a masterpiece that sharply satirizes civilization, class, religion, and human psychology through surrealist imagination.

‘Sérénade’ (1967)

‘Sérénade’ is regarded as the most commercially successful film among Luis Buñuel’s works.
The protagonist, Sérénade, is a middle-class woman who, on the surface, leads an ordinary and happy married life. However, she finds no satisfaction in her real-life marriage and lives with repressed desires and fantasies.
Eventually, she begins working as a secret prostitute during the day, and as reality and fantasy gradually blur, she is forced to confront her own desires.
In this film as well, Buñuel does not draw a clear distinction between reality and fantasy. He directs the film in such a way that the audience cannot be certain until the very end which scenes are real and which are products of Sévérine’s imagination, leaving the interpretation up to the viewer.
Rather than sensationalizing the consumption of sex, the film psychologically explores the relationship between human desire, guilt, repression, and fantasy. Thanks to this approach, ‘Sévérine’ is regarded not merely as an erotic film but as an art film that delves deeply into the human psyche.
Winner of the Golden Lion at the 1967 Venice International Film Festival, this film is considered one of Buñuel’s masterpieces and a landmark in French cinema.

‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’ (1972)

‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’ is a masterpiece representative of Luis Buñuel’s later work.
The film tells the story of six bourgeois individuals who attempt to dine together but are repeatedly prevented from doing so by unexpected events.
Just as they are about to eat, a funeral takes place, a restaurant closes, a soldier appears, or they wake up from a dream—reality and fantasy repeatedly intersect.
The film has no clear conclusion, nor does it offer any logical explanation for the events. Through this repetitive structure, Buñuel bitingly satirizes the emptiness and hypocrisy of bourgeois society.
In particular, the unique structure—in which dreams within dreams recur throughout the film—completely breaks down the boundary between reality and fantasy.
This film won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film in 1973 and is regarded as one of the finest black comedies in cinematic history.

The Significance of Luis Buñuel in Film History

Luis Buñuel is regarded as the director who most masterfully translated Surrealism into the language of cinema.
His films are not merely a string of bizarre scenes. By sharply dissecting dreams and the unconscious, desire and religion, class and power, and human hypocrisy, he introduced new modes of expression that conventional cinema had failed to convey.
Rather than relying on a logical narrative, he guided audiences to construct their own meanings through the clash of images and symbols. This directorial approach went on to profoundly influence numerous directors, including David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Terry Gilliam, and Pedro Almodóvar.
Even today, his works are still considered challenging, yet they are simultaneously recognized as some of the most original and contemporary films. This is precisely why Luis Buñuel cannot be left out of any discussion of surrealist cinema.
His films do not provide the audience with definitive answers. Instead, they blur the boundaries between reality and dreams, consciousness and the unconscious, prompting viewers to ask their own questions. In this regard, Luis Buñuel was not merely a filmmaker but an innovator who expanded the possibilities of cinema as an art form.