“Belle De Jour” (1967)
Perhaps as iconic and well-known a film as anything that Bunuel made other than “Un Chien Andalou,” “Belle Du Jour” was atypical for the filmmaker in its success, and a firm evocation of his merits and values. (It was his biggest commercial hit, and won the Golden Lion and earned a BAFTA nomination for star Catherine Deneuve, though the filmmaker attributed its popularity “more to the marvelous whores than to my direction”). Deneuve plays Severine, a young Parisian housewife who loves her husband (Jean Sorel), but is unable to be attracted to him physically, despite her own sadomasochistic fantasies. After advances from one of her husband’s friends, Husson (Michel Piccoli, again), she starts working in a brothel, becoming involved with a younger gangster (Pierre Clementi), but he becomes obsessive, ultimately shooting her husband, and leaving him in a coma. Despite the scurrilous subject matter, there’s little explicit material in “Belle Du Jour,” but it’s still among the most erotic films ever made, the repression, secret desires and fetishes seeping out of every frame. Bunuel knows that true eroticism comes from the mind, not from images, and the surreal tinges meld with psychological realism in a way that’s pretty much unforgettable (not least in the famous box scene). But the film has much more on its mind than just sex; it’s a wry, witty comedy of manners, and a pathos-filled love story, too. And of course, it provides Catherine Deneuve, one of the cinema’s greatest screen goddesses, with her most iconic part. It’s telling that, when Manoel De Olivera directed a belated sequel forty years on with “Belle Toujours,” (without Deneuve), it fell decidedly flat; “Belle De Jour” without Bunuel’s touch simply doesn’t work.
“The Milky Way” (1969)
Bunuel began on another cinematic triptych (as he termed it in his autobiography “My Last Sigh“) with “The Milky Way,” one of his most anarchic, provocative and divisive pictures. The filmmaker said that along with “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Phantom of Liberty,” the three films had the same themes, “the same grammar; and all evoke the search for truth, as well as the necessity of abandoning it as soon as you’ve found it.” The film centers on two men, making a pilgrimage from Paris to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, who along the way, encounter a number of incidents and characters who depict, or represent, Catholic heresies, from debates over the divinities of Christ, to the crucifixion of nuns, to the virginity of the Virgin Mary (played by “Eyes Without A Face” and “Holy Motors” star Edith Scob). While sounding like a dry exercise, the film is playful and absurd, nodding to Chaucer and reminiscent of Monty Python as it hops through time, while the script (co-written with Jean-Claude Carriere) makes the theological arguments engaging and surprisingly even-handed. Talky in the same way that ‘Bourgeoisie’ is without being quite as enjoyable or ironic, we can see why it’s a film perhaps better suited to the hardcore Bunuel fan than the beginner, but “The Milky Way” is still worthy and conspicuous in the director’s oeuvre.
