Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

does us no honor; all it does is fill up the bellies of the pigs whoexploit us. But the work you do because you like to do it, becauseyou've heard the call, you've got a vocation-that's ennobling! Weshould all be able to work like that. Look at me, Saturno~I don'twork. And I don't care if they hang me, I won't work! Yet I'm alive!I may live badly, but at least I don't have to work to do it!"Certain parts of Don Lope's speech come right out of Galdos; butwhere Galdos was criticizing his character for his laziness, I'm praisinghim. The surrealists were the first to sense that the work ethichad begun to tremble on its fragile foundations. Today, fifty yearslater, it's almost banal to talk about the disintegration of a valuethat's always been thought immutable. People everywhere are askingif they were really born merely to work; they're beginning to envisagesocieties composed of idlers. (France even has a minister of leisure inthe Cabinet.)Another enduring aspect of surrealism is my discovery of theprofound conflict between the prevailing moral code and my ownpersonal morality, born of instinct and experience. Until I becamepart of the movement, I never imagined such warfare, but now I seeit as an indispensable condition for life itself. More than the artisticinnovations or the refinement of my tastes and ideas, the aspect ofsurrealism that has remained a part of me all these years is a clearand inviolate moral exigency. This loyalty to a specific set of moralprecepts isn't easy to maintain; it's constantly coming into conflictwith egotism, vanity, greed, exhibitionism, facileness, and just plainforgetfulness. Sometimes I've succumbed to temptations and violatedmy own rules, but only, I think, in matters of small importance.My passage through the heart of the surrealist movement helped firmup my resolve, which is perhaps, at bottom, the essential thing.In May 1968 I found myself in Paris once again, checking locationsfor the filming of The Milky Way. One day, we suddenlycame up against a barricade put together by students in the LatinQuarter, and in twenty-four hours Paris was turned upside down. Iadmired the work of Marcuse and agreed with everything he had to