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michaellonsdale

Le fantôme de la liberté [The Phantom of Liberty] (Luis Buñuel, 1974)

Mar

9

World Kidney Day

Le fantôme de la liberté (1974)

Five adults and a child at a large table. They're all seated on toilets. One of the men is defecating. DP: Edmond Richard.

Eating is taboo, and relieving oneself is performed on a toilet at a communal table in Luis Buñuel's Le fantôme de la liberté. The farce strings together events from #Buñuel's life (who was 74 by the time he made this film), with dreams remembered by both Buñuel and co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière.

“Madrid was filled with the stench of – pardon my language – food. It was indecent.”

– le professeur des gendarmes

The title references the opening sentence from Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto (1848): “A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism.”. What follows is a wonderful, free-flowing pastiche performed by a sublime cast.