Just as Hitchcock learned how to distill suspense into its purist form, so Luis Buñuel learned how to distill surrealism into its purist form. His best films often have the slimmest of plots. On the surface, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) is about a group of people who try to eat a meal together but are always interrupted. At first glance, The Milky Way (1969) is the story of two pilgrims who encounter historical heresies along their journey.

The Exterminating Angel (1962) is another wonderfully complex Buñuel film that’s spun from a deceptively simple idea. A group of society friends gather at the home of an aristocrat. As the evening progresses, the servants feel compelled to leave, while the guests feel compelled to stay. If you’ve ever wondered what happens when house guests refuse to leave, this film will illustrate that nightmare. Why can’t they leave? Could they leave if they really wanted to? These are the kinds of questions that flow from this powerful plot device.

There has been a fair amount of speculation about the title of this film. Is Buñuel using a poetic phrase with no direct connection in order to provide an associative lift? Or is there a deeper, more subtle meaning (always a possibility with Buñuel)? Here’s what Raymond Durgnat had to say about the matter in his book Luis Bunuel:

The ‘angel’ is the spiritual climate of bourgeois conformism, drawn to its (desired) conclusion of inner paralysis. The prisoners are trapped in their social roles. Faced with the inexplicable, their rationality decomposes into fetishist fixations. The violence to which they resort is no liberation, has no quality of defiance, and in that respect is totally opposed to the convulsive sadism in L’Age d’Or.

This movie can be enjoyed on many levels. You can watch it as a kind of Twilight Zone episode that sets up a hypothetical premise and unfolds the consequences. You can approach it as social commentary and be amply rewarded with insight into how our lives are outwardly swayed by social, religious, and political influences. Or you can view the story through a psychological prism that reveals the inner turmoil and confusion that grows out of our innate desire to be accepted by others.

And if you think that’s multi-layered, wait until you experience the tone of the film, which cycles from drama to comedy to satire to the grotesque. Sometime all four qualities appear to be operating simultaneously. Sometime two qualities co-exist with one seeming to comment on the other. The complexity is there if you want to experience it, but can be ignored if you just want to settle into a good yarn. That’s what makes Buñuel such an intriguing filmmaker.

The Exterminating Angel
(1962; directed by Luis Buñuel)
The Criterion Collection (DVD)

Monday, June 25 at 2:00 a.m. eastern (late Sunday night) on Turner Classic Movies

It had been nine years since silent film director Sergei Eisenstein had released a completed film. Fortunately, Alexander Nevsky (1938), his first sound film, was a popular success, and it restored Eisenstein’s reputation as one of the most innovative film directors. With this movie, he pointed the way for combining symphonic music with narrative imagery. Three years before Orson Welles and Bernard Herrmann explored similar terrain with Citizen Kane (1941), Eisenstein and composer Sergei Prokofiev treated visual and musical composition as collaborative forms of expression. As Eisenstein explained in his first book of film theory (translated by Jay Leyda and published in English as The Film Sense):

There are sequences in which the shots were cut to a previously recorded music-track. There are sequences for which the entire piece of music was written to a final cutting of the picture. There are even sequences that furnish material for the anecdotists. One such example occurs in the battle scene where pipes and drums are played for the victorious Russian soldiers. I couldn’t find a way to explain to Prokofiev what precise effect should be ‘seen’ in his music for this joyful moment. Seeing that we were getting nowhere, I ordered some ‘prop’ instruments constructed, shot these being played (without sound) visually, and projected the results for Prokofiev — who almost immediately handed me an exact ‘musical equivalent’ to that visual image of pipers and drummers which I had shown. With similar means were produced the sounds of the great horns blown from the German lines. In the same way, but inversely, completed sections of the score sometimes suggested plastic visual solutions, which neither he nor I had foreseen in advance.

Under Stalin’s reign in the 1930s, all Soviet art was subservient to the state. Eisenstein had to work within those restrictions in order to receive funding. That often led to non-artistic — even arbitrary — decisions that marred the completed project. In his book Eisenstein: Three Films, Leyda explains why a reel of Alexander Nevsky is lost, presumably forever:

One night, when he was working on the sequence of a brawl on the bridge at Novgorod, he was taking a nap when a call came from the Kremlin that Stalin wanted to see the film. Without waking Eisenstein the flustered official (probably Dukelsky) gathered up the reels and hurried off to a screening at which Stalin gave the film his approval. Only afterwards did the official discover that he had not shown the reel that Eisenstein was working on that night; not daring to reveal that Stalin had approved an incomplete film, the official removed the reel permanently from the released film, and it has remained hidden to this day.

Alexander Nevsky was meant to reflect events contemporary to the film’s audience, even though the story was based on history. Showing Teutonic invaders repelled by 13th-century Russian soldiers echoed growing concerns about a possible invasion by Hitler and the German army. Following the Soviet-German non-aggression pact of 1939, the film was withdrawn for being politically incorrect. It was reinstated in 1941 after Germany attacked the Soviet Union.

You don’t need to know anything about the political or historical context in order to enjoy this film. There’s a visceral satisfaction that comes from the interplay of images and music. The battle scenes, especially the ones that take place on a frozen lake, are probably the best battle scenes ever filmed. This movie is a feast for both the eyes and ears.

Alexander Nevsky
(1938; directed by Sergei Eisenstein and Dmitri Vasilyev)
The Criterion Collection (DVD)

Wednesday, September 13 at 1:30 a.m. eastern (late Tuesday night) on Turner Classic Movies

Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour (1967) is a film about sex, though there’s not much sex in it. That’s because the film is concerned with the effects of repressed sexuality. A rebel and a surrealist, Buñuel often targeted hypocrisy in bourgeoisie life — via class, religion, or politics — in order to expose its inconsistencies and logical fallacies. He also preferred to approach his subjects in an unorthodox fashion. As a result, his films often have one meaning on the surface, but an entirely different meaning just below the surface.

Buñuel isn’t an easy director to decipher. The structure of his later films challenge narrative conventions in the same way his characters challenge social conventions. Belle de Jour begins as a deceptively simple story but blossoms into a multilayered exploration of alternative realities. But are they really alternative realities? Séverine (played by Catherine Deneuve) is married to a kind and generous young doctor. Judging by appearances, she should be happy. Her daydreams suggest she isn’t. Her secret life at a brothel becomes the means through which she tries to reconcile her rational life with her fantasy life.

In his film Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), Buñuel also moved between realities, though with a lighter touch. In that movie, he carefully builds a narrative reality only to suddenly shift to a surreal version of the same reality. With Belle de Jour, the shifts are more subtle, the plot is less whimsical, and the mood is more somber.

While the later Buñuel films have a puzzle-box construction, they’re quite enjoyable without your having to dig deep down. Buñuel’s best films can be read right-side up, upside down, or layer by layer. I don’t know of any other director who could craft films with such complex, even contradictory messages.

Belle de Jour
(1967; directed by Luis Buñuel)
Miramax (DVD)

Saturday, February 25 at 4:15 a.m. on The Movie Channel