The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie (The Criterion Collection)
by Javier Rioyo, José Luis López-Linares, Luis Buñuel
Our Price: $72.50
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $37.95 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD details
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD details
Actor: Delphine Seyrig, Ernesto Alonso, Fernando Rey, Jacqueline Andere, Pedro Armendáriz Jr.Director: Javier Rioyo, José Luis López-Linares, Luis Buñuel
Brand: Image Entertainment
Writer: Luis Buñuel
Producer: Frida Torresblanco
Producer: Jorge Sánchez
Writer: Agustín Sánchez Vidal
Writer: Jean-Claude Carrière
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 101 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-02-12
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Criterion
DVD Reviews of The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie (The Criterion Collection)
DVD Review: Six characters walking together down a road
Summary: 4 Stars
Different people will get different things from this odd film. I'll share with you what I take from it.
It is a series of events that at first seem real but usually become dreamlike, and sometimes end with one of the characters waking up and revealing the last scene to be a dream of his.
The most memorable scene, for me, is the scene where the major characters are invited to a dinner and, during the dinner, a curtain is raised and the diners are shown to be on a stage, observed by an audience.
This seems to me like a metaphor for our lives. It reminds me of the Shakespeare soliloquy comparing us to actors on a stage. What it says to me is that we are these actors, and there is an unseen audience for us.
To fill out that explanation, we see a bishop who wants to be a gardener. Depending on what he is wearing, he is taken for either a bishop or a gardener. Our identities are not stattic. We are playing parts. We are not what we seem to be. We aren't even what we think we are. We are souls together on a journey, like the six souls walking together along a road, shown to us a number of times throughout the film, and in the final shot.
The separation between life and death is stripped away in this film. Ghosts talk to living characters. Ghosts appear in several scenes, as alive as any of the other characters. Our lives are illusions. Our lives are dreams. Life is a dream. It is not real. Death is not death.
The living are simply the ones invited to dinner, those who are being viewed by an unseen audience. The dead haven't gone away. We are all, alive or dead, souls together on a journey.
Other than that, I can't really make sense of the film, in the sense of putting it all together to form a whole. It is a series of partially related stories. After about an hour of it, I found myself getting a little tired of what was going on. But then it picked up a bit and ended strong enough.
I like the scene of the bishop giving last rites to the man who murdered the bishop's parents, and giving the man forgiveness, and then blowing his head off with a gun.
I also like the scene of the couple having friends over for dinner, and then sneaking out a window to have sex in the garden for 20 minutes before receiving their guests.
Another scene I like is when a man and woman are about to commit adultery, when the woman's husband shows up at the door, the woman herself walks right up to him with a plausible excuse for being there, and the other man asks to have a few minutes alone with the other man's wife while the husband waits for her. Guess why.
These little scenes give you an idea of the flavor of the action of this film, and of its humor.
This film agrees with Shakespeare that we are actors in a play, but doesn't agree with Macbeth's negative judgment that life is a tale told by an idiot. The six characters walking together down that road aren't idiots. They aren't Einstein, but they aren't idiots. They are dreamers, as are we all.
Description of The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie (The Criterion Collection)
In Luis Buñuel's deliciously satiric masterpiece, an upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both actual and imagined. Fernando Rey, Stéphane Audran, Delphine Seyring, and Jean-Pierre Cassel head the extraordinary cast of this 1972 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film. Criterion is proud to present The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie in an exclusive Special Edition Double-Disc Set.What can be more enjoyable then a meal among friends and family? In Luis Buñuel's surrealistic comedy The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie it is this common ritual a sextet of upper-class friends repeatedly attempt, only to be obstructed by one obscure event after another. Masterfully balancing the dichotomy of class vs. debauchery Buñuel delivers a ripping critique of the upper class. It is clear from the beginning that the lives Buñuel?s Bourgeoisie are living are not what they seem. Eventually, their true colors begin to shine; not in actual actions but in haunting dreams. What is real and what lies in the subconscious becoming exceedingly blurry and in order to deliver his message, surrealism must take over. It is hard to pigeonhole Buñuel?s classic that won him the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film 1972: An absurd odyssey? A discreet satire? Not necessarily, but definitely charming. --Rob Bracco
Bestsellers in DVD
![The Story of Jeremiah [VHS] Image](/images/noimg.gif)
The Story of Jeremiah [VHS]Vision Video; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Wresting With God [VHS]by Vision Video
Vision Video; Published: 1990-10-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
Study Bible Video with Workbook [VHS]Spring Arbor Distributors; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $7.95
Price in other shops:
Tempo:Childrens TV Favourites Video [VHS]HarperCollins Audio; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $9.17
Price in other shops:
Tempo.Herbs:Parseley'Sb/ Party Video [VHS]HarperCollins Audio; VHS Tape; VHS Video
![Strike the Original Match [VHS] Image](/images/Strike-the-Original-Match-VHS-0001374079-X.jpg)
Strike the Original Match [VHS]New Liberty Films; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
![Medjugorje The Miracles and the Message [VHS] Image](/images/Medjugorje-The-Miracles-and-the-Message-VHS-0001373293-X.jpg)
Medjugorje The Miracles and the Message [VHS]JPN Film Production; Release date: 1995-12-15; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $29.99
Mayo Clinic Echocardiography Review Course for Boards and Recertification DVD 2008by Mayo
DVD
Price in other shops:
Pediatric Diagnostic Imaging DVD: Single Userby Oakstone
DVD
Price in other shops:
Cost Accounting [VHS]by Charles T. Horngren, George Foster, Srikant M. Datar, Howard Teall
Pearson Canada, Toronto; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Similar DVDs, VHS Video, Audio CDs
Un Chien AndalouMIC; Release date: 2004-12-26; DVD
Best price: $10.46
Price in other shops:
M (The Criterion Collection)Image Entertainment; Release date: 2004-12-07; DVD
Best price: $20.74
Price in other shops:
Peeping Tom (The Criterion Collection)Image Entertainment; Release date: 1999-11-16; Published: 1999-11-01; DVD
Best price: $19.44
Price in other shops:
Pierrot le Fou (The Criterion Collection)Image Entertainment; Release date: 2008-02-19; DVD
Best price: $49.24
Diary of a Chambermaid (The Criterion Collection)Image Entertainment; Release date: 2001-06-05; DVD
Best price: $58.00
The Milky Way (The Criterion Collection)Image Entertainment; Release date: 2007-08-21; DVD
Best price: $42.99
Port of Shadows (The Criterion Collection)GABIN,JEAN; Release date: 2004-07-20; DVD
Best price: $14.99
Price in other shops:
Viridiana (The Criterion Collection)Image Entertainment; Release date: 2006-05-23; DVD
Best price: $16.49
Price in other shops:
Contempt (The Criterion Collection)Release date: 2002-12-10; DVD
Best price: $17.99
Price in other shops:
The Exterminating Angel (The Criterion Collection)Criterion; Release date: 2009-02-10; DVD
Best price: $28.17
Price in other shops: