Η αναπαράσταση της αστικής τάξης στα κινηματογραφικά έργα του Λουίς Μπουνιουελ

Abstract of master’s final paper: «The representation of bourgeois culture as it appears through Louis Bunuel’s films» Films can be approached as source of historical documents that may enlighten particular perceptions of social reality which have been in dynamic development at certain time and space and generally as a field that provides chances for analysis of the cultural configuration of the past. Films, together with other Art objects, communicate certain social, cultural and political aspects. Louie Bunuel was born in Saragosa, Spain in the year 1900, in a catholic bourgeois family. During the Spanish Civil War Bunuel was occupied with the democratic propaganda in Paris after the Spanish Phalange had ordered a warrant for his arrest. By the end of the civil war he moved to New York where he lived till the end of the Second World War. He refused to work as a film maker in Hollywood and he went to Mexico where he felt free and able to communicate his own social and political ideas. The films that were used for the analysis of bourgeois culture were the following: Andalousian Dog, Golden Age, Land without Bread, Angel Exterminator, The diary of a Chambermaid, Galaxy, The Secret Charm of Bourgeios. Bunuel was the most representative film maker of the surrealistic movement. Surrealism, which was deeply affected by the Freudian ideas, adopted a strong oppositional view over the world of “logic” and the bourgeois as this world’s conveyor. It focused on the unconsciousness and contributed the “automation” as a method in art expression. In surrealism art becomes the bio-psychic communication of the person through the subversive use of symbols. Art was the only action where the unconscious was able to be expressed without the interruption of consciousness. In order to understand the surrealistic movement the approach of the contemporary social reality is essential. The social reality of those times contains uncertainty and insecurity caused by the procedure of modernization, the economical strikes and the often wars. In Spain the social questionings were expressed mainly through three antithetical political movements, the Democrats, the Anarchists and the Nationalists. The absence of a common language between the above political movements leaded to the civil war witch meant to be the stormy petrel of the Second World War and of the ascendant political movements of the whole 20th century. In Bunuel’s films it’s possible to discriminate those antithetical political ideas, the authorities that they legitimate as well as their relationships to the organization of the contemporary societies. The social-economical classes have been the main hierarchy of the social reality and as distinctive social groups they have constructed different cultural habits which define them. Religion together with the national state (political authority, vehicle of capitalistic spirit, army, police and educational system), have been essential elements in the construction of the cultural habits that define the authoritative relationships and the means of perception and administration of social reality