The narrative of this film is indeed experimental enough. Several small stories evolve one by one, like a torch relay, from one to the next, and then continue on. The script was written with Jean-Claude Carrière. Buñuel humbly says he doesn't have a lot of talent, and I can't imagine someone who lacks talent could write a movie that leads to such a whim. A bit like a stream of consciousness jumping and random, he created a new parallel narrative method. Here he is no longer satisfied with the fantasy scenes interspersed in the normal narrative, but simply combines the real and the illusory to create an absurd and surreal atmosphere.
The introduction of the film begins with Goya's famous painting "May 3, 1808 (The Insurgents Are Shot)". The background is that during the occupation of Spain by Napoleon's army, the soldiers executed executions as in the picture, and the Spaniards shouted "Freedom!" . When Napoleon and advanced France imposed "freedom" on the surrounding countries and people, this freedom was nothing but a "phantom", so it is understandable that the occupied people demanded "freedom to get out". The short stories in the film respond to this theme one by one.
The feature film begins with the voice of a nanny reading a story, subtly switching from a scene of Napoleon's army rambling in a church to modernity and reality. The actor who plays the babysitter appears in a lot of Buñuel's films, and he's always stupid and hilarious. Buñuel always finds some weird and perfectly appropriate people to play his characters, monks, perverts, professors, etc., and people are so amazed that just by looking at their faces, the audience can start to imagine the story for themselves .
A perverted-looking man mysteriously took some pictures of the girl, and from the expressions on the parents' faces when they discovered the pictures later, the audience naturally thought it was an obscene picture. The director played tricks on the audience, it was just some pictures of scenic spots, the parents called it disgusting and evil, etc., it was nothing more than the Arc de Triomphe Church of the Sacred Heart. This little trick is like some jokes, implying that others are thinking in a crooked way, and then telling you innocently that it is actually very pure, and it is your own dark psychology that is at work.
This is a wealthy bourgeois family, and the man suffers from insomnia. At 10:30 in the evening, he lay down, turned over, saw that it was 1 o'clock, a rooster came in, and at 2 o'clock, a woman in black appeared from the darkness holding a candle and a pocket watch, 3 At 4 o'clock, the postman rode his bicycle to his bedside, dropped a letter to him, jumped again to 4 o'clock, and an ostrich came in tremblingly through one door, passed through the bedroom and disappeared in another door. These are typical images of surreal absurdity, and we can find shadows in other psychoanalytic films and surreal paintings.
The man showed the letter received in the dream to the doctor. Although the audience was curious, the director did not explain the content of the letter, but directly transitioned to the nurse's second story. Perhaps it was just the director's daring and reckless act, but he really set up all kinds of guessing traps for future critics and audiences.
There were several plays in the village inn. First, I watched from the perspective of the corridor and photographed the residents going in and out like little bees. Then a few monks came uninvited to pray in the nurse's room, who was already wearing translucent pyjamas. In a blink of an eye, several people played cards, smoked and drank alcohol, and put their arms on the nurse's shoulders, which was indecent. An old gray-haired woman and her young nephew have an affair in this far-off place, far from home. Then these people were invited into his room by a well-dressed man. In front of everyone, he and his female assistant dressed up and performed a masochistic farce. It turned out that he had a masochism that likes to be exposed. The inn is often a place to hide filth, because it is far away from the circle of people's daily life, the guests who meet by chance are just irrelevant people, and all the secret and ugly acts of deviance have a world of free movement. The camera is like a peeping eye, revealing the other side of the bourgeoisie and the monks.
The next morning, the professor who hitched a ride with the nurse picked up the baton. He gave an example when he taught a group of disobedient military police about the rule of law and subversion of social customs. He was once invited to dinner at a friend's house. A new-style bourgeois family, modern decor, the most amazing thing is that the chairs at the dining table are actually toilets, and everyone sits on them with their pants off. After solving the problem, the professor got up and went to the toilet. Instead, the toilet was a place to eat, and it was really as private as going to the toilet. When someone knocked on the door, it said "there is someone", and the person outside the door quickly apologized and walked away. Absurd and funny. It reminds me of some contemporary art, doing everything freely and treating everything as art, completely subverting the traditional concept of beauty and ugliness. Aside from the mysterious set of theories, there is actually nothing, and people who do not agree or disagree are regarded as fools.
The two gendarmes who finally left the classroom caught a speeding driver on the road, leading to yet another wildly ridiculous story. The man who learned he had cancer came home and didn't say anything to his wife. Suddenly I was told that my daughter had disappeared mysteriously in kindergarten. When they arrived at the school, the daughter was in the classroom, but they turned a blind eye and taught the child not to interrupt, and then went to the police station to report the crime. The police attach great importance to it, and the little girl is clearly in front of them, and they are still investigating. While registering the characteristics of the missing persons, while observing the appearance of the little girl, she also wisely said "she should be unmarried". The overly dogmatic formalities are already "surreal" because it's dramatized and comical, but in everyday life, it's actually a lot of open-eyed nonsense.
A poet shot passersby with a long gun on the top of the Montparnasse building, aimlessly, and people in different places fell to the ground with different movements. After being arrested and sentenced to death, he shook hands with the people around him like no one else, and then walked straight out. The women asked him for autographs, and he became a star.
The police chief found the missing daughter and read a letter to her parents mindfully. The secretary hinted that his time was up, and he hurried away before he finished reading the distasteful letter. And his so-called important date is nothing more than a game of cards in a bar. While waiting for the cards, he told a beautiful woman the story of her dead sister. On a very hot summer, his sister was playing the piano naked in the room, and the picture was very sensual and ambiguous. Just as he was talking, his dead sister suddenly called to see him at the bar. Going to pry the grave at night, I found my sister's long hair scattered outside the nailed coffin. He was caught in the police station by the tomb watcher, and his position has been changed to someone else. The two talked in an official tone about the police force deployed around the zoo, as if it was about the suppression of animals.
Then came the end of the film. The animals in the zoo were screaming, the police were on standby, and the background sound returned to the "Get out" and gunshots in the original introduction. At the end of the picture, an ostrich stared at The two big eyes looked left and right until they gradually blurred.
people? animal? free? riot? The relationship that is unclear here, Buñuel has cleverly pointed out the elements, and naturally formed a line in the hearts of the audience. The stories he tells are all unbelievable, making people laugh at the absurd scenes, but these are not useless show-offs and gimmicks, the ridicule is so clear, the ideas are so intense, and the criticism is so powerful, enough to make the audience feel Experience profound thoughts from pure pleasure. The more you chew, the more flavorful it is. What is such a movie if it is not a masterpiece?
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