Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

Mexico (I 946-1 96 I ) 205Cocteau later that evening, he asked me why I hadn't shown up forour appointment. I told him that I'd indeed been there, but that hehadn't, whereupon he said he'd done exactly the same thing at thesame time, but certainly hadn't seen me. Intrigued, we verified eachother's stories, but the mystery remains unsolved.In 1930, Pierre Unik and I had written a screenplay based onWuthenng Heights. Like all the surrealists, I was deeply moved bythis novel, and I had always wanted to try the movie. The opportunityfinally came, in Mexico in 1953. I knew I had a first-ratescript, but unfortunately I had to work with actors Oscar had hiredfor a musical-Jorge Mistral, Ernesto Alonso, a singer and rumbadancer named Lilia Prado, and a Polish actress named Irasema Dilian,who despite her Slavic features was cast as the sister of a Mexicanme'tis. As expected, there were horrendous problems during the shoot,and suffice it to say that the results were problematical at best. There'sone scene I remember vividly, however, in which an old man isreading to a child from the bible, a little-known passage whichdoesn't appear in all editions but is far superior to the Song of Songs.Of course, the author had to put these words into the mouths ofunbelievers in order to get them printed. I can't resist quoting thepassage in full; it's from the Book of Wisdom, Chapter 11, verses1-9:For they have said, reasoning with themselves, but notright: The time of our life is short and tedious, and in the endof a man there is no remedy, and no man hath been known tohave returned from hell:For we are born of nothing, and after this we shall be as ifwe had not been; for the breath in our nostrils is smoke: andspeech a spark to move our heart,Which being put out, our body shall be ashes, and ourspirit shall be poured abroad as soft air, and our life shall passaway as the trace of a cloud, and shall be dispersed as a mist,which is driven away by the beams of the sun, and overpoweredwith the heat thereof: