Bunuel and Mexico

The Crisis of National Cinema

Browse Return to Previous Page       Related Subjects All Subjects Cinema & Media studies Cinema studies

by Ernesto R. Acevedo-Munoz

University of California Press

Due/Published November 2003, 224 pages, cloth

ISBN 0520239520

Though Luis Buñuel spent his most productive years as a director in Mexico, film histories and criticism invariably pay little attention to his work during this period. The only English-language study of Buñuel's Mexican films, this book is the first to explore a significant but neglected area of this filmmaker's distinguished career and thus to fill a gap in our appreciation and understanding of both Buñuel's achievement and the history of Mexican film.

Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz considers Buñuel's Mexican films--made between 1947 and 1965--within the context of a national and nationalist film industry, comparing the filmmaker's employment of styles, genres, character types, themes, and techniques to those most characteristic of Mexican cinema. Here, Buñuel's films emerge as a link between the Classical Mexican cinema of the 1930s through the 1950s and the New Cinema of the 1960s, flourishing in a time of crisis for the national film industry and introducing some of the stylistic and conceptual changes that would revitalize Mexican cinema.

Contents

 List of Figures
Acknowledgments

Introduction
1. Mexican Cinema in the Time of Luis Buñuel
2. Buñuel and Mexico
3. Los Olvidados and the Crisis of Mexican Cinema
4. Genre, Women, Narrative
5. On the Road: Subida al Cielo and La Ilusión Viaja en Tranvía
6. Masculinity and Class Conflict: Buñuel's Macho-Dramas
Conclusion. From Buñuel to "Nuevo Cine"

Filmography of Luis Buñuel
Notes
Bibliography
Index