Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

Mexico (1946-1961) 199age to reconcile their differences and begin the conventional lovescene. I was bored to tears, so I told Negrete to pick up the stick athis feet and to turn it round and round in the oily mud as he talked.It was a nice moment. Despite its box-office names, however, thefilm was only moderately successful, and it took me over two yearsof scratching my nose, watching flies, and living off my mother'smoney before I made another movie.At one point, I began to write a screenplay with the Spanish poetJuan Larrea; and the film, llegible hzjo defiuta-The Illegible Son ofthe Flute-was a bit of a throwback to surrealism: a few good ideasclustered about the old chestnut of a dead Europe and the new lifeflowering in Latin America. Dancigers couldn't get the financing,however, and it wasn't until much later, in 1980, that the Mexicanjournal Vuelta published the script.In 1949, Dancigers told me that Fernando Soler, a famous Mexicanactor, was going to direct and star in a film for him; but giventhe amount of work involved, he needed an honest and above alldocile director to give him a hand. I agreed to do it, and althoughEl gran calauera was impossibly banal, it made a lot of money. NowOscar was ready for a "real" film, and proposed that we make oneabout the slum children, abandoned and living from hand to mouthin Mexico. I'd loved Vittorio de Sica's Shoeshzne, and Oscar's idea forLos olvidados (The Young and the Damned) seemed very exciting, sofor the next several months, I toured the slums on the outskirts ofMexico City-sometimes with Fitzgerald, my Canadian set designer,sometimes with LUIS Alcoriza, but most of the time alone. I woremy most threadbare clothes; I watched, I listened, I asked questions.Eventually, I came to know these people, and much of what I sawwent unchanged into the film. I remember a review by IgnacioPalacio which argued that three brass bedsteads in a wooden shackwas pure whimsy on my pan, yet it was absolutely true. I saw thosebeds and, in fact, much more; some couples went without the mostbasic necessities just in order to buy brass bedsteads when they gotmarried.When I wrote the screenplay, I wanted to insert a few bizarre