My Last Sigh
The only way out is not to see these laws, conceived so that we can live together in some reasonable fashion, as primordial necessities. It isn’t “necessary” that the world exist, that we be here, living and dying. We’re the children of accident; the universe could have gone on without us until the end of time. I know, it’s an impossible image—an empty and infinite universe, an abyss which for some inexplicable reason has been deprived of life. Perhaps there are in fact other worlds just like this; after all, deep down inside, we all have a penchant for chaos.
Some people dream of an infinite universe; others see it as finite in space and time. I suppose I’m somewhere in between. I can’t conceive of an infinite universe, and yet the idea of a finite one, which by definition will cease to exist one fine day, plunges me into a fascinating and horrifying void. And so I swing back and forth from one image to the other, and have no answers.
If we could imagine that there is no such thing as chance, that the history of the world is logical and even predictable, then we’d have to believe in God. We’d have to assume the existence of a great watchmaker, a supreme organizer. Yet, by the same token, if God can do anything, might he not have created a world governed by chance? No, the philosophers tell us. Chance cannot be one of God’s creations, because it’s the negation of God. The two are mutually exclusive, and since I myself have no faith (which is also often a matter of chance), there seems to be no way to break out of this vicious circle—which is why I’ve never entered it in the first place.
In the end, belief and the lack of it amount to the same thing. If someone were to prove to me—right this minute—that God, in all his luminousness, exists, it wouldn’t change a single aspect of my behavior. I find it rather hard to believe that God is watching me every second, that he worries about my health, my desires, my mistakes. After all, if I ever accepted such a notion, I’d have to believe in my eternal damnation.
What am I to God? Nothing, a murky shadow. My passage on this earth is too rapid to leave any traces; it counts for nothing in space or in time. God really doesn’t pay any attention to us, so even if he exists, it’s as if he didn’t. My form of atheism, however, leads inevitably to an acceptance of the inexplicable. Mystery is inseparable from chance, and our whole universe is a mystery. Since I reject the idea of a divine watchmaker (a notion even more mysterious than the mystery it supposedly explains), then I must consent to live in a kind of shadowy confusion. And insofar as no explication, even the simplest, works for everyone, I’ve chosen my mystery. At least it keeps my moral freedom intact.
People often ask me about science. Doesn’t science, they say, look for ways to clarify the mystery? Perhaps, I reply; but, to be honest, science doesn’t interest me much. I find it analytical, pretentious, and superficial—largely because it doesn’t address itself to dreams, chance, laughter, feelings, or paradox—in other words, all the things I love the most. As a character in The Milky Way declares: “The fact that science and technology fill me with contempt can’t help but force me to believe in God.” I’d have to disagree, because one can also choose, as I have, simply to live in the mystery.
All my life I’ve been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.
Fortunately, somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether. I suppose that’s why Christianity invented the notion of intentional sin. When I was younger, my so-called conscience forbade me to entertain certain images—like fratricide, for instance, or incest. I’d tell myself these were hideous ideas and push them out of my mind. But when I reached the age of sixty, I finally understood the perfect innocence of the imagination. It took that long for me to admit that whatever entered my head was my business and mine alone. The concepts of sin or evil simply didn’t apply; I was free to let my imagination go wherever it chose, even if it produced bloody images and hopelessly decadent ideas. When I realized that, I suddenly accepted everything. “Fine,” I used to say to myself. “So I sleep with my mother. So what?” Even now, whenever I say that, the notions of sin and incest vanish beneath the great wave of my indifference.
As inexplicable as the accidents that set it off, our imagination is a crucial privilege. I’ve tried my whole life simply to accept the images that present themselves to me without trying to analyze them. I remember when we were shooting That Obscure Object of Desire in Seville and I suddenly found myself telling Fernando Rey, at the end of a scene, to pick up a big sack filled with tools lying on a bench, sling it over his shoulder, and walk away. The action was completely irrational, yet it seemed absolutely right to me. Still, I was worried about it, so I shot two versions of the scene: one with the sack, one without. But during the rushes the following day, the whole crew agreed that the scene was much better with the sack. Why? I can’t explain it, and I don’t enjoy rummaging around in the clichés of psychoanalysis.
Amusingly enough, a great many psychiatrists and analysts have had a great deal to say about my movies. I’m grateful for their interest, but I never read their articles, because when all is said and done, psychoanalysis, as a therapy, is strictly an upper-class privilege. Some analysts—in despair, I suppose—have declared me “unanalyzable,” as if I belonged to some other species or had come from another planet (which is always possible, of course). At my age, I let them say whatever they want. I still have my imagination, and in its impregnable innocence it will keep me going until the end of my days. All this compulsion to “understand” everything fills me with horror. I love the unexpected more and more the older I get, even though little by little I’ve retired from the world. (Last year, I calculated that in six days, or one hundred and forty-four hours, I spent only three hours talking with friends. The rest of the time I was alone with my fantasies, a glass of water or a cup of coffee, an aperitif twice a day, a sudden memory or image that took me by surprise. These days, one thing leads to another until suddenly I find that night has fallen.)
I do apologize if these few pages seem vague and tedious, but thoughts like these are part of my life, along with all the other frivolous details. I’m not a philosopher, and I don’t do very well with abstractions. If those who fancy themselves possessed of a philosophical bent smile as they read, I’m glad to have given them an amusing moment. It seems like finding myself back in school with the Jesuits and hearing a professor say, “Refute Buñuel for me.” (As with Kant, I’m sure it wouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes.)
16
Back to America
THE year 1938 found me in Bayonne in the Basses-Pyrénées, where, as a propagandist, I was in charge of launching small air balloons filled with tracts over the mountains. Some Communist friends who were later executed by the Nazis took care of the actual send-offs when the winds were blowing in the right direction. The whole system seemed fairly absurd to me as I stood there watching the balloons sailing off every which way, dropping tracts everywhere—in the woods, the fields, the water—and I wondered what difference a little piece of paper dropped from nowhere could possibly make to anyone. Finally, I went back to Paris to ask the Spanish ambassador, Marcelino Pascua, if he didn’t perhaps have anything better for me to do.
At this time, films about the Spanish Civil War were being made in the United States. Hollywood often made serious errors in these films, particularly where local details were concerned, so Pascua suggested I return to California and get myself a job as a technical adviser. I’d saved some money from my salary during the past three years, and assisted by contributions from friends, I bought passage for my family.
When I got to Hollywood, I found that my old friend and supervisor, Frank Da
vis, was the producer of Cargo of Innocence, a film about the evacuation of Bilbao, and he immediately hired me as a consultant, hastening to add that historical accuracy was not exactly vital to the American spectator. I had just read the scenario and was ready to go to work when an order arrived from Washington, via the Motion Picture Producers Association, forbidding any and all films on the Civil War, no matter which side the movie supported.
I stayed on for a few months, watching my money dwindle away and, since I couldn’t afford return tickets, trying to find a job. I even tried to sell some jokes to Chaplin, but he didn’t seem anxious to see me. One of the gags, which had come to me in a dream, had to do with a revolver that shot a bullet so gently that it floated to the ground when it came out of the barrel. Ironically, this same image appeared in The Great Dictator, with a cannon instead of a gun; but it was a complete coincidence, since I hadn’t had a chance to tell him.
Despite my efforts, it was impossible to find work. I went to see René Clair, now an internationally known director, who was frantically searching for a script, terrified that if he didn’t make a film within the next three months, people would start calling him a “European phony.” He finally made I Married a Witch and spent the entire war working in Hollywood.
One of the nicer ironies, however, was receiving a letter from the de Noailles, while I was alone and penniless, asking if I couldn’t find some kind of interesting work for their friend Aldous Huxley.
At about this time, I learned that my category, my quinta, had been mobilized for duty at the front. I wrote the Spanish ambassador in Washington asking to be repatriated, but he replied that the moment was “inopportune,” the situation confusing, and that he’d let me know as soon as I was needed. A few weeks later, the war came to an end.
Since there was clearly nothing for me to do in Hollywood, I went to New York. Times were bad all over, but I was willing to do anything, and New York had the reputation (or encouraged the illusion?) of being a generous and hospitable city where work was easy to find. Soon after I arrived, I ran into a mechanic from Catalonia named Gali, who had emigrated to New York in 1920 with a violinist friend. They’d both found jobs the day after the boat docked, the violinist with the Philharmonic and Gali, the mechanic, as a dancer in a posh hotel. Unfortunately, times were different now, he told me, and promptly introduced me to another Catalonian, a bit of a racketeer who was connected to a gangster who also happened to be the head of a chef’s union. They gave me a letter of introduction and some references and told me to go to a certain hotel where I’d surely find work in the kitchens.
Before taking the plunge, however, I ran into an old friend of mine, an Englishwoman named Iris Barry, who was the wife of the vice-president of the Museum of Modern Art. Apparently, Nelson Rockefeller was setting up his Office of Inter-American Affairs, and waiting only for authorization by the government, despite the fact that it had always been notoriously indifferent to propaganda, especially films. And so, just as World War II began, Iris offered to try to get me a job with Rockefeller’s committee.
“In the meantime,” she told me, “you have to get around a little and make some contacts. Entre nous, the first secretary in the German embassy has smuggled us two propaganda movies—Leni Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will and another one about the Nazi conquest of Poland. It’d be an interesting experiment to cut them down a little, since they’re way too long, and have some screenings, just to show the so-called experts what a movie can do.”
Since my German was nonexistent, I was given an assistant and went to work, trying to preserve some continuity in the speeches of Hitler and Goebbels and still make some significant cuts. Ideologically, of course, the films were horrific, but technically they were incredibly impressive. When they were filming the Nazi rallies at Nuremberg, four huge towers were erected just for the cameras. The cutting and editing went well, and the abridged versions were widely shown, particularly to senators and consulates. René Clair and Charlie Chaplin rushed to see them and had totally different reactions.
“Never show them!” Clair said, horrified by their power. “If you do, we’re lost.”
Chaplin, on the other hand, laughed, once so hard that he actually fell off his chair. Was he so amused because of The Great Dictator?
While the editing was going on, Rockefeller got the green light for his committee, and the museum gave a huge cocktail party, where Iris said she’d introduce me to the millionaire who worked for Rockefeller and in whose hands, it seemed, my fate reposed. At the party, the man held court in one of the exhibition rooms where people were lining up for introductions.
“When I give you the sign,” Iris said to me, busily running from group to group, “you slip into the line.”
I stood around talking to Charles Laughton and his wife, Elsa Lanchester, until Iris signaled, whereupon I joined the line, and after a long wait I finally arrived at His Majesty.
“How long have you been here, Mr. Buñuel?” he asked.
“About six months,” I replied.
“How wonderful.”
And that was it, at least for the moment. Later that same day, he and I had a more serious talk at the bar of the Plaza. When he asked if I was a Communist, I told him I was a Republican, and at the end of the conversation, I found myself working for the Museum of Modern Art. The following day, I had an office, several assistants, and the title of editor-in-chief. Apparently, I was to choose anti-Nazi propaganda films, arrange for their distribution in North and South America, and in three languages—English, Spanish, and Portuguese. I was also supposed to produce two films of our own. (On one occasion, I remember meeting Joseph Losey, who brought us a short.)
I lived in the middle of Yorktown, at the corner of Second Avenue and Eighty-sixth Street, a fairly solidly pro-Nazi neighborhood. Early in the war, there were frequent pro-Fascist demonstrations in the streets, which often turned into violent confrontations. Not until America entered the war against Germany did the riots finally cease. New York was also nervous about bombardments at the time, and blackouts were commonplace. The Museum of Modern Art multiplied its safety drills. When Alexander Calder, a close friend who put us up for a while, moved out of the city to Connecticut, I bought his furniture and took over his lease. Happily, I was once again in touch with several members of the surrealist group now living in New York—André Breton, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and the Swiss Kurt Seligmann. Even Yves Tanguy, the most bizarre and bohemian of them all, with tufts of hair sticking out of his head, was here, married to a real Italian princess who tried to keep him on the wagon. All of us went about our activities as if everything were perfectly normal; Duchamp, Léger, and I even planned to make a pornographic film on a rooftop, but thought better of it when we found out that the penalty was ten years in jail.
Among the people I came to know in New York were Saint-Exupéry, who always amazed us with his repertory of magic tricks; Claude Lévi-Strauss, who sometimes participated in our surrealist surveys; and Leonora Carrington, who’d just gotten out of a psychiatric hospital in Santander where her English family had put her. Separated now from Max Ernst, Leonora apparently lived with a Mexican writer named Renato Leduc. One day, when we arrived at the house of a certain Mr. Reiss for our regular meeting, Leonora suddenly got up, went into the bathroom, and took a shower—fully dressed. Afterward, dripping wet, she came back into the living room, sat down in an armchair, and stared at me.
“You’re a handsome man,” she said to me in Spanish, seizing my arm. “You look exactly like my warden.”
(Years later, while I was making The Milky Way, Delphine Seyrig told me that when she was a very little girl, she sat on my lap during one of those meetings.)
Dali was also in New York. For years we’d gone our separate ways, but I remember going to see him back in February 1934, the day after the riots in Paris. I was very nervous about the political situation, but there he was, already married to Gala, and sculpting a naked woman down on all fours. To be more
precise, he was in the process of enlarging the volume of her derrière—and wholly indifferent to what was happening in the world outside his studio.
Later, during the Civil War, he was quite clear about his sympathies for the Fascists. He even proposed a bizarre commemorative monument to them, which was to be made by melting down into a single mass the bones of all those who’d died during the war. Then, at each milestone between Madrid and the Escoriai, a pedestal was to be erected which would hold a skeleton sculpted from the real bones. As they approached the Escorial, the skeletons would get larger; the first, just outside Madrid, would be only a few centimeters high, but the last, at the Escorial, would be at least three or four meters.
In his book The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, I was described as an atheist, an accusation that at the time was worse than being called a Communist. Ironically, at the same moment that Dali’s book appeared, a man named Prendergast who was part of the Catholic lobby in Washington began using his influence with government officials to get me fired. I knew nothing at all about it, but one day when I arrived at my office, I found my two secretaries in tears. They showed me an article in a movie magazine called Motion Picture Herald about a certain peculiar character named Luis Buñuel, author of the scandalous L’Age d’or and now an editor at the Museum of Modern Art. Slander wasn’t exactly new to me, so I shrugged it off, but my secretaries insisted that this was really very serious. When I went into the projection room, the projectionist, who’d also read the piece, greeted me by wagging his finger in my face and smirking, “Bad Boy!”
Finally, I too became concerned and went to see Iris, who was also in tears. I felt as if I’d suddenly been sentenced to the electric chair. She told me that the year before, when Dali’s book had appeared, Prendergast had lodged several protests with the State Department, which in turn began to pressure the museum to fire me. They’d managed to keep things quiet for a year; but now, with this article, the scandal had gone public, on the same day that American troops disembarked in Africa.