My Last Sigh

  “How can you bear to say such stupid things!” Gala shouted at me. “And in the presence of such gorgeous rocks!”

  By the time the picnic was over, we’d all had a great deal to drink. I’ve forgotten what the argument was about, but Gala was attacking me with her usual ferocity when I suddenly leapt to my feet, threw her to the ground, and began choking her. Little Cécile was terrified and ran to hide in the rocks with Lidia. Dali fell to his knees and begged me to stop; I was in a blind rage, but I knew I wasn’t going to kill her. Strange as it may seem, all I wanted was to see the tip of her tongue between her teeth. Finally, I let go, and two days later she left.

  Later, she, Eluard, and I lived for a time in the same hotel overlooking Montparnasse Cemetery. People said that Eluard never left his room without his pearl-handled revolver because Gala had told him that I wanted to kill her. If I’m giving you all this background, it’s only because fifty years later, in Mexico City, I suddenly dreamed of Gala. She was sitting in a box at the theatre with her back to me. I called her softly, she turned around, stood up, and kissed me lovingly on the lips. I can still smell her perfume and feel the incredible softness of her skin. In fact, I was more surprised by this dream than by any other, including the one about the Virgin.

  Since we’re on the subject of dreams, I remember a curious anecdote I heard in Paris in 1978 which concerned my friend Gironella, a wonderful Mexican painter who had come to France with his wife, Carmen Parra, a stage designer, and their seven-year-old child. They seemed to be having trouble with their marriage, and at a certain point Carmen returned to Mexico while Gironella stayed on in Paris. Three days later he received a telegram announcing that she had begun divorce proceedings. When he asked why, her lawyer’s answer was: “Because of a dream.” They were divorced a short time later.

  I suppose it’s nothing exceptional, but one of the strange things about dreams is that in them I’ve never been able to make love in a truly satisfying way, usually because people are watching. They’re standing at a window opposite our room; we change rooms, and sometimes even houses, but the same mocking, curious looks follow us wherever we go. Or sometimes, when the climactic moment arrives, I find the woman sewn up tight. Sometimes I can’t find the opening at all; she has the seamless body of a statue.

  In waking dreams, on the other hand, if the erotic adventure is prepared for meticulously enough, the goal can, with the proper discretion, be achieved. When I was very young, I indulged in endless reveries about the beautiful queen of Spain, the wife of Alfonso XIII. When I was fourteen, I fantasized a scenario that was eventually expanded into Viridiana. The queen retires to her bed-chamber, her servants help her undress, she gets into bed. When the maids have left, she drinks a glass of milk into which I’ve poured a powerful narcotic, and an instant later she falls into a heavy sleep. At that point, I slip into her royal couch and accomplish a sensational debauching.

  Waking dreams are as important, as unpredictable, and as powerful as those we have when we’re asleep. I’ve often indulged myself in delicious fantasies about being invisible, and therefore becoming the most invulnerable man in the world. There are myriad variations on this theme, including one based on an ultimatum that I remember from the time of the Second World War. My invisible hand gives Hitler a piece of paper which states that he has twenty-four hours to execute Goering, Goebbels, and the rest of his cohorts. If he doesn’t, the message says, he’d better look out. Alarmed, Hitler calls his secretaries.

  “Who brought this paper?” he screams.

  Invisible in a corner of the room, I watch his hysteria. On the following day, I assassinate Goebbels (for example).… From there, ubiquitous as well as invincible, I transport myself to Rome and give Mussolini the same ultimatum. In between, I slip into the bedroom of some gorgeous woman and sit in an armchair while she slowly removes her clothes. Then I leave to renew my ultimatum to Hitler, who is now wild with rage.

  During my student days, when I used to walk with Pepin Bello in the Sierra de Guadarrama, I often stopped before a particularly magnificent panorama, an enormous amphitheatre entirely surrounded by mountains.

  “Imagine that there are ramparts all around it,” I’d say, “with slits and moats and galleries and arches. And imagine that everything inside belongs to me. I have my army and my farmers, my artisans, a chapel. We live peacefully; all we do is shoot some arrows from time to time at curiosity seekers who try to get too close to the gates.”

  That vague but persistent attraction for the Middle Ages brings me back over and over again to the same image of a feudal lord, isolated from the world, ruling his kingdom like a benevolent dictator. He doesn’t do much of anything—perhaps a small orgy every once in a while. He drinks mead and wine before a wood fire where whole animals roast on spits. Time passes and nothing changes; everyone lives inside himself. There are no journeys to take.

  Sometimes I also fantasize about an unexpected and providential coup d’état that has made me the ruler of the world. I’m omnipotent; nothing and no one can refuse to obey my orders. Every time this reverie occurs, my first decision is to get rid of the media, which to me is the source of all our anxieties. Afterward, because of the panic I feel when I see Mexico overwhelmed by the runaway population explosion, I imagine that I convoke a team of biologists and order them to disseminate a hideous virus which will purge the earth of two thousand million people. “Even if I’m one of them,” I tell them courageously. Then I secretly try to manipulate the consequences; I make lists of people who should be saved—certain family members, my best friends, the families and friends of my friends—but the list is endless, and finally I give up.

  During the past ten years, I’ve also fantasized about freeing the world from the oil tyranny by exploding atomic bombs in certain key underground wells. (I’m aware of the practical problems involved, so perhaps I’d better reserve this strategy for some other time.)

  Or what about going for a walk one day with Luis Alcoriza while we were working on a script in San José Purua? We decided to go to the river, and when we arrived at the water’s edge, I suddenly grabbed his arm and pointed to a magnificent bird perched in a tree on the opposite bank. Luis took the rifle I was carrying and fired; the bird fell into the bushes. He waded into the water and started across; it was difficult going, but at last he made it to the other side, pushed aside the bushes, and found—a stuffed eagle. On the label attached to one foot was the name of the store where I’d bought it and the price I’d paid.

  On another occasion, I’m eating in a restaurant with Alcoriza when a beautiful woman sits down at the next table, alone. Luis can’t take his eyes off her.

  “Luis,” I say sternly, “we’re here to work. I don’t like you wasting our time ogling women.”

  “I know,” he replies. “I’m sorry.”

  We go on with our dinner.

  Then, later, just before dessert, his eyes stray once more in her direction. He smiles. She smiles back. Now I’m very angry, and I remind him that we’re in San José on serious business. I also tell him that his macho woman-chasing is revolting. He too gets angry and informs me that when a woman smiles at him, it’s his duty to smile back. I leave the table in a rage and retire to my room.

  Alcoriza calms down, finishes his dessert, and of course joins his beautiful neighbor for coffee. They introduce themselves, talk a bit; then Alcoriza takes his conquest to his room, undresses her tenderly, and discovers, tattooed on her belly—“cortesía de Luis Buñuel”!

  (The woman is an elegant call girl from Mexico City whom I bring to San José at enormous expense and who follows my instructions to the letter.)

  Yes, the stories of the eagle and the call girl are only fantasies; but I know Alcoriza would have acted exactly as he did in my imaginary scripts—particularly where the beautiful woman was concerned!

  10

  Surrealism (1929–1933)

  I RETURNED to Spain several times between 1925 and 1929, renewing my old friendships wi
th my colleagues at the Residencia. During one of these trips, Dali told me excitedly that Lorca had just written a magnificent play called The Love of Don Perlimplín for Belisa in His Garden and that I absolutely had to hear it immediately. Federico was reticent about reading it; he thought—not without cause—that my tastes were too provincial for the subtleties of drama. But Dali insisted, and finally the three of us met in the cellar bar at the Hotel Nacional, where wooden partitions separated the room into compartments, as in certain Eastern European restaurants.

  Lorca was a superb reader, but something in the story about the old man and the young girl who find themselves together in a canopied bed at the end of Act One struck me as hopelessly contrived. As if that weren’t enough, an elf then emerges from the prompter’s box and addresses the audience.

  “Well, Eminent Spectators,” he says. “Here are Don Perlimplín and Belisa.…”

  “That’s enough, Federico,” I interrupted, banging on the table. “It’s a piece of shit.”

  Lorca blanched, closed the manuscript, and looked at Dali.

  “Buñuel’s right,” Dali said in his deep voice. “Es una merda.”

  Even now, I’ve no idea how the play ends; in fact, I have to confess that I don’t think much of any of Lorca’s plays, which I find ornate and bombastic. He himself, as an individual, far surpassed his work.

  Some time later, I went to the premiere of Yerma at the Teatro Español in Madrid, with my mother, my sister Conchita, and her husband. My sciatica was so painful that evening that I had to stretch my leg out on a stool in the box. Curtain rises: we see a shepherd walking slowly across the stage. (He needs plenty of time, because he has to recite a long poem.) He’s wearing sheepskin leggings held in place by bands around his calves. The poem is endless. I fight my impatience. Scene after scene goes by until at last we get to Act Three, where the washerwomen are rinsing their clothes in a painted stream.

  “The flock!” they cry, when they hear the tinkle of bells. “Here comes the flock!”

  Two ushers are ringing bells in the back of the theatre, an innovation the tout-Madrid found extraordinarily original and avant-garde; but I was so incensed that I limped out, supported by my sister. My various experiences with surrealism meant that this kind of fake modernism left me cold.

  Since the scandal outside the Closerie des Lilas, I’d felt increasingly seduced by that passion for the irrational which was so characteristic of surrealism (despite Epstein’s warning). I was fascinated by a photo in La Révolution Surréaliste of “Benjamin Péret Insulting a Priest” and by a survey on sexuality in the same journal. The surrealists answered every question with what seemed to be total frankness—a feat that might seem commonplace today, but at that time, questions on the order of “What’s your favorite place to make love? With whom? How do you masturbate?” seemed incredible to me.

  In 1929, at the invitation of the lecture society of the Residencia, I went to Madrid to talk on avant-garde cinema. I brought along a few films to show—René Clair’s Entr’acte, the dream sequence from Renoir’s La Fille de l’eau, Cavalcanti’s Rien que les heures. I also planned to explain the slow-motion sequence and to illustrate it with shots of a bullet slowly emerging from the barrel of a gun. The tout-Madrid turned out, and after the screenings Ortega y Gasset confessed to me that if he were younger, he’d love to try his hand at movies too. True to form, when I realized how aristocratic my audience was, I suggested to Pepin Bello that we announce a menstruation contest and award prizes after the lecture; but like so many other surrealist acts, this one never happened.

  At the time, I was probably the only Spaniard among those who’d left Spain who had had any experience with the cinema. When the Goya Society of Saragossa asked me to make a film about the life of the painter to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of his death, I wrote a complete script, with some technical advice from Jean’s sister, Marie Epstein. Afterwards, however, when I went to see Valle Inclán at the Fine Arts Institute, I discovered that he too was making a movie about Goya. I was all ready to bow out gracefully before the master when he himself withdrew; but, in the end, the project was abandoned for lack of funds.

  One of my favorite authors was Ramón Gómez de la Serna, whose short stories inspired my second screenplay. As a unifying device, I experimented with clips from a documentary showing the making of a newspaper. A man buys a paper from a kiosk and sits down on a nearby bench to read it; as he reads, Serna’s stories appear on the screen, each preceded by a newspaper headline—a local crime, a football match, a political event. When the “stories” are over, the man gets to his feet, crumples up the paper, and throws it away.

  A few months later, I made Un Chien andalou, which came from an encounter between two dreams. When I arrived to spend a few days at Dali’s house in Figueras, I told him about a dream I’d had in which a long, tapering cloud sliced the moon in half, like a razor blade slicing through an eye. Dali immediately told me that he’d seen a hand crawling with ants in a dream he’d had the previous night.

  “And what if we started right there and made a film?” he wondered aloud.

  Despite my hesitation, we soon found ourselves hard at work, and in less than a week we had a script. Our only rule was very simple: No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted. We had to open all doors to the irrational and keep only those images that surprised us, without trying to explain why. The amazing thing was that we never had the slightest disagreement; we spent a week of total identification.

  “A man fires a double bass,” one of us would say.

  “No,” replied the other, and the one who’d proposed the idea accepted the veto and felt it justified. On the other hand, when the image proposed by one was accepted by the other, it immediately seemed luminously right and absolutely necessary to the scenario.

  When the script was finished, I realized that we had such an original and provocative movie that no ordinary production company would touch it. So once again I found myself asking my mother for backing, which, thanks to our sympathetic attorney, she consented to provide. I wound up taking the money back to Paris and spending half of it in my usual nightclubs; ultimately, however, I settled down and contacted the actors Pierre Batcheff and Simone Mareuil, Duverger the cameraman, and made a deal to use the Billancourt studios.

  The filming took two weeks; there were only five or six of us involved, and most of the time no one quite knew what he was doing.

  “Stare out the window and look as if you’re listening to Wagner,” I remember telling Batcheff. “No, no—not like that. Sadder. Much sadder.”

  Batcheff never even knew what he was supposed to be looking at, but given the technical knowledge I’d managed to pick up, Duverger and I got along famously. Dali arrived on the set a few days before the end and spent most of his time pouring wax into the eyes of stuffed donkeys. He played one of the two Marist brothers who in one scene are painfully dragged about by Batcheff. For some reason, we wound up cutting the scene. You can see Dali in the distance, however, running with my fiancée, Jeanne, after the hero’s fatal fall.

  Once the film was edited, we had no idea what to do with it. I’d kept it fairly secret from the Montparnasse contingent, but one day at the Dôme, Thériade, from the Cahiers d’Art, who’d heard rumors about it, introduced me to Man Ray. Ray had just finished shooting Les Mystères du château de Dé, a documentary on the de Noailles and their friends, and was looking for a second film to round out the program. Man Ray and I got together a few days later at La Coupole, where he introduced me to a fellow surrealist, Louis Aragon, who had the most elegant French manners I’d ever seen. When I told them that Un Chien andalou was in many ways a surrealist film, they agreed to go to a screening the following day at the Studio des Ursulines and to start planning the premiere.

  More than anything else, surrealism was a kind of call heard by certain people everywhere—in the United States, in Germany, Spain, Yugoslavia—who,
unknown to one another, were already practicing instinctive forms of irrational expression. Even the poems I’d published in Spain before I’d heard of the surrealist movement were responses to that call which eventually brought all of us together in Paris. While Dali and I were making Un Chien andalou we used a kind of automatic writing. There was indeed something in the air, and my connection with the surrealists in many ways determined the course of my life.

  My first meeting with the group took place at their regular café, the Cyrano, on the place Blanche, where I was introduced to Max Ernst, André Breton, Paul Eluard, Tristan Tzara, René Char, Pierre Unik, Yves Tanguy, Jean Arp, Maxime Alexandre, and Magritte—everyone, in other words, except Benjamin Péret, who was in Brazil. We all shook hands, and they bought me a drink, promising not to miss the premiere of the film that Aragon and Man Ray had already spoken of so highly.

  The opening of Un Chien andalou took place at the Ursulines, and was attended by the tout-Paris—some aristocrats, a sprinkling of well-established artists (among them Picasso, Le Corbusier, Cocteau, Christian Bérard, and the composer Georges Auric), and the surrealist group in toto. I was a nervous wreck. In fact, I hid behind the screen with the record player, alternating Argentinian tangos with Tristan und Isolde. Before the show, I’d put some stones in my pocket to throw at the audience in case of disaster, remembering that a short time before, the surrealists had hissed Germaine Dulac’s La Coquille et le clergyman, based on a script by Antonin Artaud, which I’d rather liked. I expected the worst; but, happily, the stones weren’t necessary. After the film ended, I listened to the prolonged applause and dropped my projectiles discreetly, one by one, on the floor behind the screen.