Volume 25, Number 2 · February 23, 1978
Buñuel's Private Lessons
By Michael Wood
That Obscure Object of Desire
a film directed by Luis Buñuel
The idea of Spain had a certain vogue in France in the nineteenth century, from Mérimée and Gautier to Debussy and Ravel. It meant, usually, Granada and Seville, orange trees, boleros, secret gardens, southern nights, gypsies, guitars, castanets, and abrupt, capricious passions unknown to the colder civilizations of the north. It meant dark-eyed, dark-haired beauties—so much so that a character in Flaubert's Education sentimentale, published in 1869, can claim to be tired of such things ('Assez d'Andalouses sur la pelouse!'), while the hero of Pierre Louÿs's La Femme et le pantin, published in 1898, is so entirely trapped inside this dusky Iberian fantasy that he can regret never having had a blonde mistress, inadvertently suggesting a title to Luis Buñuel as he does so: 'J'aurai toujours ignoré ces pâles objets du désir.' Buñuel's new film is described as 'inspiré par' Louÿs's novel.
Review, 4188 words
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