Luis Buñuel : the red years, 1929-1939

711 Pages·2012·6.85 MB·English

by  Buñuel

WISCONSIN FILM STUDIES
Patrick McGilligan
Series Editor
Luis Buñuel
The Red Years, 1929–1939
Román Gubern
and
Paul Hammond
The University of Wisconsin Press
Publication of this volume has been made possible, in part,
through support from the Program for Cultural Cooperation
between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States Universities,
and from the Anonymous Fund of the College of Letters and Science
at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
The University of Wisconsin Press
1930 Monroe Street, 3rd Floor
Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059
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London WC2E 8LU, England
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Originally published in Spain as Los años rojos de Luis Buñuel, copyright © 2009 by
Román Gubern and Paul Hammond
English edition copyright © 2012
The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any format or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without written permission of the University of
Wisconsin Press, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gubern, Román.
[Años rojos de Luis Buñuel. English]
Luis Buñuel: the red years, 1929–1939 / Román Gubern and Paul Hammond.
p. cm. —(Wisconsin film studies)
Originally published in Spain as Los años rojos de Luis Buñuel.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-299-28474-9 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-299-28473-2 (e-book)
1. Buñuel, Luis, 1900–1983—Criticism and interpretation.
2. Buñuel, Luis, 1900–1983—Political and social views.
3. Motion picture producers and directors—Spain—Biography.
I. Hammond, Paul, 1947 July 19– II. Title. III. Series: Wisconsin film studies.
PN1998.3.B86G8313 2012
791.4302’33092—dc22
[B]
2011011630
Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations

Luis Buñuel
Introduction
1 The Militant Surrealist
2 The Production of L’Âge d’or
3 A Fecund Scandal
4 A Brief Stay in Hollywood
5 The Coming of the Spanish Second Republic
6 A Stormy Year
7 Time-Serving at Paramount-Joinville
8 The Mutations of L’Âge d’or and Other Projects
9 From Las Hurdes to Terre sans pain
10 Dubbing at Warner Bros.
11 Commerce, Art, and Politics
12 Filmófono
13 The Outbreak of the Spanish Civil War
14 A Two-Year Mission in Paris
15 Final Flight to the United States
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Photomontaged frieze of portraits of the members of the Surrealist Group,
December 1929
Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles and their daughter, ca. 1930
Drawing by Dalí of a blasphemous anal, oral, and genital flower, 1930
A frame still from Menjant garotes, directed by Buñuel in 1930
A collage by Max Ernst from his La Femme 100 têtes (1929) and a frame still
from L’Âge d’or (1930)
The devastation caused to Studio 28 by a Fascist gang on 3 December 1930
The welcoming committee for Buñuel on his arrival in California in November
1930
An MGM poster for El presidio (Ward Wing, 1930)
Buñuel with actress Georgia Hale in Beverly Hills at the end of 1930
MGM’s letter of farewell, which Buñuel received at the end of February 1931
Max Ernst, Loplop Introduces Members of the Surrealist Group, 1931
Buñuel, Giacometti, and their giraffe, April 1932
Buñuel’s letter to Breton of 6 May 1932
Buñuel and Pierre Unik working on the Wuthering Heights script, July 1932
A possible meeting of the Order of Toledo in the Venta de Aires inn on the
outskirts of the city, 1932–34
Stills from Ténérife (Yves Allégret, 1932) and Las Hurdes (1933)
José Gutiérrez Solana’s Old Highland Woman, ca. 1933–34Herreros to promote
Back cover of no. 1 of the Spanish AEAR magazine Octubre, June–July 1933
Poster by Enrique Herreros to promote Urgoiti’s Estudio Proa-Filmófono
Still from Don Quintín, el amargao (Luis Marquina, 1935)
José Maria Torres’s urban décor for Don Quintín, el amargao
Cover of the 1930 edition of the stage play of La hija de Juan Simón
Herreros poster for ¿Quién me quiere a mí? (José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, 1936)
Cover of a novelization of ¡Centinela alerta!
Receipt in Bunuel’s handwriting, dated 25 August 1936
Juan Piqueras, the Communist film critic from Valencia
Julio Álvarez del Vayo, foreign minister in the Largo Caballero government
(1936–37)
Luis Araquistáin, Spanish ambassador to Paris, September 1936–May 1937
Soviet documentary moviemaker Roman Karmen
Stills from Espagne 1936 (Jean-Paul Dreyfus and Luis Bunuel, 1937)
Still from Espagne 1936
The opening shot in Espagne 1936
Willi Münzenberg in Paris, ca. 1936
Frontage of the Spanish Tourist Office in Paris, 1937–38
Juan Vicens and Maria Luisa González, 1932
Rafael Sánchez Ventura and the Acin family, 1933
Franco-Argentinean film star Georges Rigaud
Maurice Henry’s drawing of exemplary and lapsed Surrealist figures, 1950
Henry Fonda in Blockade (William Dieterle, 1938)
A page from Dalí’s letter from New York to Buñuel in Los Angeles, April 1939
Abbreviations
AAER Association des Artistes et Écrivains Révolutionnaires (Association of
Revolutionary Artists and Writers)
ACI Alliance du Cinéma Indépendant (Alliance of Independent Cinema)
ADLAN Agrupació Amics de l’Art Nou (Friends of the New Art Group)
AEAR Association des Écrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires / Asociación de
Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (Association of Revolutionary Writers
and Artists)
AEHC Asociación Española de Historiadores del Cine (Spanish Association of Film
Historians)
AGA Archivo General de la Administración del Estado (General Archive of the
[Spanish] State Administration)
AIEDC Association Internationale des Écrivains pour la Défense de la Culture
(International Association of Writers for the Defense of Culture)
BILR Bureau International de Littérature Révolutionnaire (International Bureau of
Revolutionary Literature)
BOC Bloc Obrer i Camperol (Workers’ and Peasants’ Front)
CEA Cinematografía Española y Americana S.A. (Spanish and American Cinema,
Ltd.)
CGALI Centralnyj Gosudarstvennyj Archiv Literatury i Iskusstva ([Russian] Central
Archive of Literature and Art)
CGT Conféderation Générale du Travail (General Confederation of Labor)
CIFESA Compañía Industrial Film Español S.A. (Spanish Industrial Film Company,
Ltd.)
CNT Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (National Confederation of Labor)
CominternCommunist International / Third International
CP Communist Party
CPGB Communist Party of Great Britain
CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
CPUSA Communist Party of the United States of America
ECESA Estudios Cinema Español S.A. (Spanish Film Studios, Ltd.)
ERPI Electrical Research Products, Inc.
FAI Federación Anarquista Ibérica (Iberian Anarchist Federation)
FIARI Fédération International de l’Art Révolutionnaire Indépendant (International
Federation of Independent Revolutionary Art)
FUE Federación Universitaria Escolar (University Students Federation)
GECI Grupo de Escritores Cinematográficos Independientes (Independent Film
Writers Group)
Gestapo Geheime Staats Polizei (German political police)
GPU Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenne (Soviet political police between
1922 and 1934)
JSU Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas (Unified Socialist Youth)
KPD Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (German Communist Party)
LRS La Révolution surréaliste (1924–29)
LSASDLR Le Surréalisme au service de la Révolution (1930–33)
MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
MNCARS Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
MoMA Museum of Modern Art, New York
MPPDAA Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America
NEP Novaya Ekonomicheskaya Politika (New Economic Policy)
NKVD Narodnyi Komissaryat Vnutrennikh Del (Soviet political police between 1934
and 1946)
OIAA Office of Inter-American Affairs
OVRA Organizzazione di Vigilanza e Repressione dell’ Antifascismo (Organization
for the Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism)
PCE Partido Comunista de España (Spanish Communist Party)
PCF Parti Communiste Français (French Communist Party)
PFI Progressive Film Institute PNV Partido Nacionalista Vasco (Basque
Nationalist Party)
POI Partido Obrero Internacional (International Workers Party)
POUM Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (Workers Party of Marxist
Unification)
PSOE Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist Workers Party)
PSUC Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya (Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia)
RAPP Rossiyskaya Assotsiatsiya Proletarskikh Pisatele (Russian Association of
Proletarian Writers)
RCA Radio Corporation of America
RGASPI Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsialnoi i Politicheskoi Issledovanii
(Russian State Archive of Social and Political History)
SFIC Section Française de l’Internationale Communiste (French Section of the