“I don’t know the lines,” utters a nervous and sweat-drenched diner in the new trailer for the 4K restoration of surrealist master Luis Buñuel’s 1972 “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.” With a screenplay co-written by French novelist, screenwriter, and actor Jean-Claude Carrière, Buñuel’s film plays out like a blistering bad dream, featuring continuously interrupted dinners, interconnected dream sequences, and left-wing terrorists, and that’s not even the half of it. The film’s illustrious cast also features the likes of Fernando Rey (“The French Connection”), Delphine Seyrig (“Last Year at Marienbad”), and Jean-Pierre Cassel (“Army of Shadows”). Nominated for two Academy Awards, ‘Discreet Charm’ would take home the award for Best Foreign Language Film.
READ MORE: The Essentials: Luis Bunuel’s Best Films
In a career spanning over five decades, Buñuel was a lifelong enemy of such establishments as the Roman Catholic church and capitalism, viewing their adherents as quotidian fanatics. It is this spirit of rebellion which propelled his name atop the list of film’s iconoclasts. Before the age of 30, he would etch his name in film history with “Un Chien Andalou,” a highly influential and revolutionary surrealist short film he made in collaboration with Salvador Dalí. Best remembered for its eye-splitting sequence, “Un Chien Andalou,” like much of Buñuel’s filmography, would push the limits of what film as a medium was capable of.
STUDIOCANAL, along with help from the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC), produced the 4K restoration of “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.” The restoration work itself was conducted by L’Image Retrouvée laboratory.
New York City’s historic Film Forum is set to screen the film for two weeks, from June 24 to July 7. Watch the new trailer for this terrific masterpiece below.