Frances Partridge
The Man Himself
My Last Breath: The Autobiography of Luis Buñuel
By Luis Buñuel (Translated by Abigail Israel
Jonathan Cape 264pp £8.95 order from our bookshop
Last summer we heard that one of the greatest cinema directors of this century, the Spaniard Luis Buñuel, had died at the age of eighty-three. Fortunately for us he had written his autobiography in French a few years earlier, and here we have it in its Anglo-American translation.
My Last Breath is an informal, discursive, almost conversational account of a career that began with a bang and pursued its undeviating course until the end of Buñuel’s life. A man of images rather than letters, Buñuel accepted the help of his script-writer, Carrière, but adds that ‘the portrait I have drawn is wholly mine’; and by the end of the book the reader may well find it hard to be sure whether the man he or she has come to know is not even more remarkable than his startlingly original output.
Born into a prosperous middle-class family in Aragon, Luis had a good education (first with the Jesuits, then at the famous Residencia of Madrid), passed his exams with flying colours and soon developed interests in music, acting and natural history – particularly of insects. But ‘the two basic sentiments of
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Perhaps, rather than having diagnosed a real societal malaise, she has merely projected onto an entire generation a neurosis that actually affects only a small number of people.'
@HoumanBarekat on Patricia Lockwood's 'No One is Talking About This'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/culturecrisis
*Offer ends in TWO days*
Take advantage of our February offer: a six-month subscription for only £19.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/literaryfebruary/
'Nourished on a diet of exceptionalism and meritocracy, millennials internalised the harmful falsehood that hard work necessarily yields success. The very least they should settle for is a "cool job", one that ... is the focus of their "passion".'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/workers-twerkers