Saturday, December 27, 2008

Luis Buñuel: Mi Ultimo Suspiro



I searched for hours to find a photo showing the exact edition of this book that I recently purchased - nowhere to be found. So this is my own scan and probably the first online publishing of this particular cover. The English edition was published as My Last Sigh.

I have read Buñuel's autobiography before - about 30 years ago! I still do have it well in remembrance, but just like Buñuel's, reminiscing can't always be trusted, I thought I'd need to re-check. The book is very entertaining, and if you know Buñuel's movies, it seems very much like a literary match to his cinematic storytelling.

Like in his movies you are getting a seemingly straightforward story of his life full of anecdotes of all kind, but then he drifts off into different topics, explains over several pages how to make the perfect Martini dry or lets his sister tell a story about the Buñuel family's fear of spiders, and half the time you cannot really be sure, whether he's telling the truth or not.

By the way, Buñuel was Alfred Hitchcock's favourite director, and you can imagine Hitchcock creating surrealist films, if he hadn't worked under such commercial restrictions as he did.



A gathering in Los Angeles, 1972: (from left to right standing) Robert Mulligan, William Wyler, George Cukor, Robert Wise, Jean-Claude Carrière, Serge Silberman;
(seated) Billy Wilder, George Stevens, Buñuel, Alfred Hitchcock, Rouben Mamoulian.

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