Luis Buñuel

 Luis Buñuel 

1) Mast and Kawin describe Buñuel as a filmmaker without a cinematic country.
2) Buñuel made films in France, Mexico, and Spain throughout his career.
3) He was involved with the Surrealists in France during the 1920s and co-directed
    Un Chien Andalou (1929) with Salvador Dali.

One of Buñuel's best known films is
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) 
1)Mast and Kawin describe as developing the gap between the simple things that
    bourgeoisie expect (success, money, eating)
2)and the complex levels of dreams, wishes, and imaginings that also exist.
3)The film depicts a group of upper middle class people
    attempting to dine with one another. However, the group is always interrupted by strange
    events.

In a retrospective article from 2000, Robert Ebert elaborates on the 'interrupted dinner' trope in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie:

"(Look) at The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), about people who are trapped on the other side of the mirror: They constantly arrive for dinner and sometimes even sit down for it, but are never able to eat. They arrive on the wrong night, or are alarmed to find the corpse of the restaurant owner in the next room, or are interrupted by military maneuvers.

Dinner is the central social ritual of the middle classes, a way of displaying wealth and good manners.
It also offers the convenience of something to do (eat) and something to talk about (the food), and that is a great relief, since so many of the bourgeoisie have nothing much to talk about, and there are a great many things they hope will not be mentioned.
The joke in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is the way Bunuel interrupts the meals with the secrets that lurk beneath the surface of his
decaying European aristocracy:
witlessness,
adultery,
drug dealing,
cheating,
military coups,
perversion and
the paralysis of boredom. 

His central characters are politicians, the military and the rich, but in a generous mood he throws in a supporting character to make fun of the church--a bishop whose fetish is to dress up as a gardener and work as a servant in the gardens of the wealthy."

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel, 1972):

This is a photo from the clip we saw. 

Here's the clip we saw Click Here

Class and Conflict in Luis Buñuel's 'The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie' | Film Essay

Click Here

Discussion on Belle du Jour:

MOVIE OF THE WEEK: BELLE DE JOUR (directed by Luis Buñuel)

Catherine Deneuve’s porcelain perfection hides a cracked interior in one of the actress’s most iconic roles: Séverine, a Paris housewife who begins secretly spending her after­noon hours working in a bordello. This surreal and erotic late-sixties daydream from provocateur for the ages Luis Buñuel is an examination of desire and fetishistic pleasure (its characters’ and its viewers’), as well as a gently absurdist take on contemporary social mores and class divisions. Fantasy and reality commingle in this burst of cinematic transgression, which was one of Buñuel’s biggest hits.