Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

"On the contrary," I replied. "It wasn't unforgivable at all. Itwas subversive. "The following morning dawned with a delicious coincidence, anarticle in the paper about a man in Berlin who tried to take apart aChristmas tree in the middle of the midnight Mass.On New Year's Eve, Chaplin-a forgiving man-once againinvited us to his house, where we found another tree decorated withbrand-new presents. Before we sat down to eat, he took me aside."Since you're so fond of tearing up trees, Buhuel," he said to me,"why don't you get it over with now, so we won't be disturbedduring dinner?"I replied that I really had nothing against trees, but that I couldn'tstand the kind of ostentatious patriotism I'd heard that evening.That was the year of City Lights. I saw the rushes one day and\found the scene where Chaplin swallows the whistle endless, but Ikept my mouth shut. Neville agreed with me, but he spoke up, andChaplin later made some extensive cuts. Curiously, he seemed tolack self-confidence and had a good deal of trouble making decisions.He also had strange work habits, which included composing themusic for his films while sleeping. He'd set up a complicated recordingdevice at his bedside and used to wake up partway, hum a fewbars, and go back to sleep. He composed the entirety of "La Violetera"that way, a plagiarism that earned him a very costly trial.Besides being forgiving, he was also a generous man and gaveseveral screenings of Un Chien andalou at his house. I remember thefirst time. The movie had barely begun when we heard a loud noisebehind us and turned around to see Chaplin's Chinese majordomo,who was running the projector, flat out on the floor in a dead faint.(Much later, Carlos Saura told me that when Geraldine Chaplin wasa little girl, her father used to frighten her by describing certainscenes from my movie.)Another friend was Thomas Kilpatnck. He was a scriptwriterand one of Frank Davis's assistants, and by some miracle he spokeflawless Spanish.