This came in the outstanding 10-DVD boxed set 'Rialto Pictures: 10 Years', one of the finest things I've bought from The Criterion Collection (and a great deal too, one I'd heartily endorse).I had to wait an entire day, after watching the dreadful 'Disaster Movie', to get the acrid taste out of my mouth to watch this one, by my fourth favourite director ever ('Viridiana' is still probably my favourite of his, though). Luckily it had three of my favourite French actors from the period, in Bulle Ogier (just check out 'Maitresse' if you don't understand why), Delphine Seyrig and Fernando Rey (for the two 'French Connection' films alone)--even though for a director of Bunuel's strength, any actors could have sufficed. It's the ideas that stand out most triumphantly.It's most known for being Bunuel's Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Language Film, but its OTHER nomination is what's almost neglected when people talk about him. Yes, they talk about Bunuel the director, or (from David Thomson) Bunuel the photographer, but people never realize his two nominations for the Calanda, Spain-native were never for director, but for writing (with another nod for his swan song, 'The Obscure Object of Desire').

This French film from BAFTA nominated director Luis Buñuel (Un Chien Andalou, Land Without Bread, Belle De Jour) has a very iconic poster, the big pair of lips with legs wearing stockings and a bowler hat, and being in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die I was hoping the film itself would be as good as the poster. Basically the film consists of guests gathering for a dinner together, and this is intertwined with the individual characters having dreams about weird things happening at the dinner, making the latter of the film complex and virtual. The guests attending the dinner are Ambassador Don Rafael Acosta (Fernando Rey), Madame Simone Thévenot (Delphine Seyrig), M. Thevenot (Paul Frankeur) and Florence (Bulle Ogier), with the evening hosted by Alice Sénéchal (BAFTA nominated Stéphane Audran) and her husband Henri (Jean-Pierre Cassel). You are not sure of all the scenes, apart from the obvious things, whether they are part of a dream or reality, as every time the upper-middle class people try to have their dinner something interrupts them. Events in the dinner attempts include dropped turkeys/chickens, the table appearing on a theatre stage in front of a live audience, dead characters walking around as blood-covered zombies, and heavily armed men storming in and killing everyone with machine guns. Also starring Julien Bertheau as Bishop Dufour, Claude Piéplu as Colonel and Michel Piccoli as Home Secretary. Despite not knowing where to go and what was real in this film, I did find it an interesting watch, especially with the interruptions and bizarre scenarios, like the theatre and gun scenes, and the editing is certainly inventive, so I would say it is a worthwhile surreal comedy drama. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and it was nominated for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced, and it won the BAFTA for Best Screenplay, and it was nominated for Best Film and Best Sound Track, and it was nominated the Golden Globe for Best Foreign-Language Foreign Film. Very good!

I am aware many think its a classic but the film is pretentious and actually quite stupid. The symbolism is heavy handed. I know that many think this is a masterpiece but its a confusing mess. There are some parts that are forgotten and never explained. A woman comes on denying Christ but we never find out why. The sets look beautiful and to be fair there is a certain glamor to the film. The cast do what they can and the fault is not with he actors but with the director who seems to have an over blown ego. This was made at a time when some directors were trying to be very arty, esoteric and too clever by half. Today its a shambles. Some of the interior locations look fine but the dream sequences are just ridiculous. This sadly is almost embarrassing to watch today.

La Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie is a celebrated film by a well-regarded surrealist auteur. Given that, and given my taste for such things, I went in with high hopes. But I rarely found it more than mildly amusing.It's undeniably clever. Bunuel's dry humor sparkles, and his gentle social critique hits its marks more often than not. The penultimate shot of Fernando Rey with a slice of ham stuffed in his mouth is one of the funniest and most memorable cinematic images I've encountered in quite a while. And Delphine Seyrig breezes through her scenes with hilariously blithe detachment. But the parts don't quite add up to a greater whole.The film reaches its peak about halfway through, once a pattern has been established (dinner parties will be attended, but dining will be teasingly withheld) and the central narrative has begun to digress and fragment. As the surreal intrudes upon the quotidian, a delicious sort of suspense sets in. Pity, then, that the last forty-five minutes squander this tension, retreating to tepid farce and a rather obvious critique of upper-crust social mores.Someone on the film's board once quoted the director as saying, "the bourgeois moral is the immoral thing for me, that which should be combated; the moral founded in our unjust social institutions as the religion, the homeland, the family, the culture, in short, the so-called pillars of the society." Thematically, the film consists of variations on this familiar counter-cultural conceit, and such thinking was certainly voguish in the late 60s and early 70s. It's an interesting and potentially valid argument, but I found the film's handling of the idea superficial, even clichéd.The same could be said, I suppose, of El Topo or Sweet Movie, but those films transcend glib adherence to fashionable ideologies and period style. I don't think La Charme Discret does that. Of course, it's more an urbane, low-key comedy of manners than a flaming art-bomb thrown through the window of middlebrow complacency, so perhaps the comparison is unfair. As a comedy, it is appealing, in a mild sort of way.Finally, I was disappointed by the film's look. I understand that the bland stage-set dining rooms are a device, and a successful one. But surreal detours aside, there isn't much to look at. The camera placements and movements are almost ploddingly ordinary, and while they capture the events adequately, they don't do anything interesting with them.I'm being unkind, of course, and terribly unfair. By stressing these complaints, I'm giving short shrift the wonderful performances and amusingly understated comic dialog. I'm overlooking the fabulously eerie dream sequences and Bunuel's masterful control of tone. I gave La Charme Discret a 7/10 because it IS charming, funny and somewhat intellectually intriguing. But I still came out of the experience feeling a bit let down...