Bu Nuel - Hardcover

Bunuel knew everyone. He helped Picasso hang Guernica. He was thrown off a Hollywood set by Garbo and attended orgies arranged by Chaplin. He watched Cocteau smoke opium, had his horoscope read by Andre Breton, saw Sergei Eisenstein sell out to capitalism. He tried to strangle Paul Eluard's wife and shared a cell with Trotsky's murderer. He planned to make a pornographic movie with Marcel Duchamp and Fernan Leger, and he fumed while Federico Garcia Lorca tried to seduce his friend and collaborator Salvador Dali. In John Baxter's superb biography Luis Bunuel comes startlingly into the light for the first time. With the cooperation of Bunuel's family and interviews with his collaborators and friends in Hollywood, France, Spain, and Mexico, Baxter delves into unpublished documents, letters, and family records to reveal a man of charm, compassion, and, above all, humor - an artist who disguised his sensitivity in cynicism and a calculated use of the bizarre.

Dangerous, enigmatic, and elusive, Bunuel was one of the greatest creative artists of the twentieth century. Bunuel knew everyone. He helped Picasso hang Guernica, was thrown off a Hollywood set by Garbo, attended orgies arranged by Chaplin, watched Cocteau smoke opium, had his horoscope read by Andr Breton, saw Sergei Eisenstein sell out to capitalism, tried to strangle Paul Eluard's wife, shared a cell with Trotsky's murderer, planned to make a pornographic movie with Marcel Duchamp and Fernand Leger, and fumed while Federico Garcia Lorca tried to seduce his friend and collaborator Salvador Dali.

Bunuel's films, made over a fifty-year period from his 1929 Un Chien Andalou -- with its infamous image of a razor drawn across a girl's eyeball -- to a late blossoming in the sixties and seventies with Belle du Jour, Viridiana, and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, still retain their power to shock.

John Baxter's superb biography brings Luis Bunuel into the light for the first time. With the cooperation of Bunuel's family, and collaborators and friends in Hollywood, France, Spain, and Mexico, Baxter uses original interviews, unpublished documents, letters and family records, revealing a man of charm, compassion and, above all, humor -- an artist who disguised his sensitivity in cynicism and a calculated use of the bizarre.