The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

Six people try to have dinner and never manage it. That is the film. Every attempt is interrupted by a funeral, an army exercise, a police raid or a dream. The structure came out of Buñuel's own sleep. He joked that whenever he needed another scene he simply filmed one of his recurring dreams, and three of them are in here: forgetting his lines on stage, meeting his dead cousin in the street and following him into a house full of cobwebs, and waking to find his dead parents watching him. He and Jean-Claude Carrière wrote five drafts. The idea started from producer Serge Silberman forgetting a dinner invitation of his own. The working title was Bourgeois Enchantment. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Buñuel told a reporter he had already paid a 25,000 dollar bribe to secure it, Silberman collected the statue on his behalf, and at the academy's request Buñuel posed for a photograph in a wig and outsized sunglasses. The recurring shot of the six walking silently down an empty country road is the film's most lasting image and is never explained. Who it is for: anyone who prefers rhythm to logic. Who it is not for: viewers who want resolution. There is nothing here to resolve.