Subject
Re: Nabokov contra Bunuel, etc.... (fwd)
Date
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: rodney welch <rwelch@scjob.sces.org>
>
> From: Charles Nicol <EJNICOL@root.indstate.edu>
>
> Judging by the one reference I can think of--and the logic of the
> thing as well--I believe that Nabokov did NOT like Bunuel. The
> reference is a scathing but elliptical one, probably in an interview,
> about films where, among other things, beggars rape nuns; at any
> rate, it seemed a clear reference to one Bunuel film (can't remember,
> but a woman's name and Catherine Denueve?). If we think of
> Bunuel's early collaboration with Dali (an obvious Nabokov dislike)
> as well as his politics, we shouldn't expect anything different.
> -Charles Nicol
The film you are referring to is VIRIDIANA; the actress was not
Deneuve, but Silvia Pinal. It seems I recall those remarks, too, come to
think of it; but that was just one film, a fairly straightforward one for
Bunuel, and Bunuel is about more than that. (By the way, the nun is not
raped, but she almost is.)
I disagree with you that Nabokov's dislike of Dali suggests that
he would immediately dismiss Bunuel. While Dali and Bunuel started their
careers together, they went radically different ways and stayed
permanently pissed off at each other from the mid-1940s on. Bunuel was
more purely artistic than the thoroughly commercial and sensationalist
Dali, and his humor was far more subtle and droll. A good many people who
like Bunuel despise Dali, including most of the people who have written
books about the former.
Because I favor both artists, I prefer to think VN would
like Bunuel, even if he surely wouldn't approve of the latter's
naive embrace of Communism. The man who said "Genius always skirts the
rational" would hopefully consider Bunuel's politics with the "perfect
detachment" he applied to Gogol and Tolstoy.
The key link for me between Bunuel and Nabokov is that both are
masters of surrealism. Please, don't get your long knives out; I am not
so ignorant as to suggest that VN gave a damn for the French art movement
(or any movement) of the 1920s, or that he held it in anything but sheer
contempt. (As, it seems to me, he said somewhere.) But if we think of
surrealism as a narrative form that easily wanders between dream and
reality -- a form where reality only exists between quotation marks --
then the link between Nabokov and Bunuel seems to me fairly clear. The
author of TERRA INCOGNITA and PALE FIRE, and the fan of Robbe-Grillet,
does not seem all that far from the creator of THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL
(where dinner guests find themselves trapped at a party; modern-day snobs
in a perfectly bourgeois wilderness), THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE
BOURGEOISIE (a remake of sorts, where a similar group of snobs embark on
an endless search for a decent meal) or THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE
(where two actresses play the same woman, a fact noticeable only to the
audience).
And I think the artist who could suggest the depths of sexual
depravity -- with nary an obscenity -- in LOLITA would appreciate
Bunuel's masterful BELLE DU JOUR, an extraordinarily erotic film with
only a bare minimum of exposed flesh. Sublety, mystery and cunning (if
I may re-spin Stephen Dedalus's recipe) are the signatures of either
artist.
And, as I mentioned, both men loved to play with bugs, and saw in
the world of lower creatures not a few suggestions of the savagery in
human society.
I don't know if Prof. Appel is out there anywhere, but I would
really, really like to hear his opinion on this matter.
RW
From: rodney welch <rwelch@scjob.sces.org>
>
> From: Charles Nicol <EJNICOL@root.indstate.edu>
>
> Judging by the one reference I can think of--and the logic of the
> thing as well--I believe that Nabokov did NOT like Bunuel. The
> reference is a scathing but elliptical one, probably in an interview,
> about films where, among other things, beggars rape nuns; at any
> rate, it seemed a clear reference to one Bunuel film (can't remember,
> but a woman's name and Catherine Denueve?). If we think of
> Bunuel's early collaboration with Dali (an obvious Nabokov dislike)
> as well as his politics, we shouldn't expect anything different.
> -Charles Nicol
The film you are referring to is VIRIDIANA; the actress was not
Deneuve, but Silvia Pinal. It seems I recall those remarks, too, come to
think of it; but that was just one film, a fairly straightforward one for
Bunuel, and Bunuel is about more than that. (By the way, the nun is not
raped, but she almost is.)
I disagree with you that Nabokov's dislike of Dali suggests that
he would immediately dismiss Bunuel. While Dali and Bunuel started their
careers together, they went radically different ways and stayed
permanently pissed off at each other from the mid-1940s on. Bunuel was
more purely artistic than the thoroughly commercial and sensationalist
Dali, and his humor was far more subtle and droll. A good many people who
like Bunuel despise Dali, including most of the people who have written
books about the former.
Because I favor both artists, I prefer to think VN would
like Bunuel, even if he surely wouldn't approve of the latter's
naive embrace of Communism. The man who said "Genius always skirts the
rational" would hopefully consider Bunuel's politics with the "perfect
detachment" he applied to Gogol and Tolstoy.
The key link for me between Bunuel and Nabokov is that both are
masters of surrealism. Please, don't get your long knives out; I am not
so ignorant as to suggest that VN gave a damn for the French art movement
(or any movement) of the 1920s, or that he held it in anything but sheer
contempt. (As, it seems to me, he said somewhere.) But if we think of
surrealism as a narrative form that easily wanders between dream and
reality -- a form where reality only exists between quotation marks --
then the link between Nabokov and Bunuel seems to me fairly clear. The
author of TERRA INCOGNITA and PALE FIRE, and the fan of Robbe-Grillet,
does not seem all that far from the creator of THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL
(where dinner guests find themselves trapped at a party; modern-day snobs
in a perfectly bourgeois wilderness), THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE
BOURGEOISIE (a remake of sorts, where a similar group of snobs embark on
an endless search for a decent meal) or THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE
(where two actresses play the same woman, a fact noticeable only to the
audience).
And I think the artist who could suggest the depths of sexual
depravity -- with nary an obscenity -- in LOLITA would appreciate
Bunuel's masterful BELLE DU JOUR, an extraordinarily erotic film with
only a bare minimum of exposed flesh. Sublety, mystery and cunning (if
I may re-spin Stephen Dedalus's recipe) are the signatures of either
artist.
And, as I mentioned, both men loved to play with bugs, and saw in
the world of lower creatures not a few suggestions of the savagery in
human society.
I don't know if Prof. Appel is out there anywhere, but I would
really, really like to hear his opinion on this matter.
RW