Wednesday 9 February 2011

Essay Idea: Luis Bunuel's Phantom of Liberty (1974)

For my essay I'm thinking of writing about surrealist film  and its anti-narrative structure from beginning to end. My focus film will be Luis Bunuel's Phantom of Liberty which I remember making no sense at all! The film is structured into several 'mini stories' of absurdities in todays society that are compleatly unrelated to each other. The stories are interlinked through the characters acquaintances, following one character till they meet another then following the new arrival in the story. The narrative quickly jumps from place to place using this formular, beginning in Toledo 1808 during the revolution, to 1970's france in a park, police station country farm house, several houses, cafe, graveyard and ending in a zoo.

"The Phantom of Ligerty. Bourgeois convention is demolished in this surrealist gem. Featuring an elegant soiree with guests seated at toilet bowls, poker-playing monks using religious medals as chips, and police officers looking for a missing girl who is right under their noses, this perverse, playfully absurd comedy of non sequiturs deftly compiles many of the themes that preoccupied Buñuel throughout his career—from the hypocrisy of conventional morality to the arbitrariness of social arrangements." (Unknown (2007)



Opening Scene - Toledo 1808





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