Luis Bunuel Double

A pair of early Bunuel films, neither of which are quite feature-length.
Land Without Bread (Spain, France, Documentary, 1933); This is a genuinely tragic tale, indeed it seems at times that Bunuel has almost a cock eye too it, he knows that he is layering the misery on to an almost ridiculous manner, as though a mild parody of misery-docs. The direction tells a story which the image agrees with; not vice versa; this is a very manipulated film, note the weird swelling music. In fact, at times shots that should be spontaneous (man at stream, goat falling off a cliff) simply don't make sense unless they have been set up. Near the end we had to finally agree this is meant to be an exploration of the poverty, just perhaps a self-aware one. The postscript is perhaps the grimmest moment in film history, looked on in one sense.
L'Age D'Or (Spain, France, Re-Watch, 1930); The hour long piece, usually paired with 'Un Chien Andalou', that we had a chance to see her again. This is Bunuel's, perhaps, most crowd pleasing work. It has what the layman would recognise as the classic surrealist elements; the stone on the man's head, the cow in the room. This is perhaps as it is Bunuel at his most simple. He is displaying the psychologies of desire, of denunciation, of wishing and then rejecting. Also the key fetish elements in the main storylines. The parts around are baffling, though interpretation psychoanalytically, if one so wished, is surely possible. The priests can speak for themselves. A simple introdution to some of Bunuel's key later psychological themes.