Volume 30, Number 17 · November 10, 1983
Farewell Buñuel
By Michael Wood
My Last Sigh
by Luis Buñuel, translated by Abigail Israel
Knopf, 256 pp., $15.95
Until he was about seventy-five, old age was a joke or an abstraction for Luis Buñeul. He had been seriously deaf since his forties, and had carefully cultivated the role of the hermit: lively in his mind, but not living in the world. 'Look,' he would say when he caught sight of a decrepit ancient on the street, 'Have you seen Buñuel? Only last year he was still going strong. What a collapse.' On the other hand, as this gag itself indicates, he was always capable of boyish humor, the sort of thing that made him a heroic mischief-maker in Spain before he turned his hand to the mischief of the movies. There is a nice late example in My Last Sigh, slightly flubbed by the eager economy of the English version. When the question of an Oscar came up for The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Buñuel, straight-faced, told a group of Mexican reporters that everything would be all right, he had paid the $25,000 he had been asked for. 'Americans may have their faults,' he said, 'but they are men of their word.' Banner headlines in Mexico, scandal in Los Angeles, floods of telexes. Buñuel explains that it was a joke, calm returns. Three weeks pass, and the film receives an Oscar. Buñuel remarks to his friends, 'Americans may have their faults but they are men of their word.' The translation drops this admirable punch line.
Review, 4642 words
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