Luis Buñuel's Land Without Bread: The critics and the contexts

Abstract

In this article, I attempt to reconcile surrealist and Leftist readings of Land Without Bread by grounding the more germane points of each in a historical context. In the first half of the article, I outline and critique the ways in which the film has been claimed both as ‘documentary surrealism’ and ‘a fleeting incitement for revolutionary change’. In the second half of the article, I detail the film's production history and conclude that both the historical record and the film's form suggest that Buñuel's project cannot be neatly categorized as either ‘surrealist’ or ‘political’. Rather, Land Without Bread subverts the form of the ethnographic documentary and the travelogue film in order to disrupt attempts to account for and rehabilitate the Hurdanos—but not simply because Buñuel believes that the Hurdanos, as a particular group of people, lie beyond recuperation. The problem they pose is not specific to their race, culture or nationality; it is the problem of the human condition, which in Buñuel's estimation defies conclusive explanation.

Keywords:

• Buñuel
• Surrealism
• Anarchism
• Las Hurdes
• ethnographic film
• travelogue