The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (French: Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie) is a 1972 comedy-drama film directed by Luis Buñuel from a screenplay he co-wrote with Jean-Claude Carrière.^[2] The narrative concerns a group of bourgeois people attempting—despite continual interruptions—to dine together. The French-language film stars Fernando Rey, Stéphane Audran, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Paul Frankeur, Delphine Seyrig, Bulle Ogier, Julien Bertheau, and Milena Vukotic.

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Theatrical release poster
French	Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie
Directed by	Luis Buñuel
Written by	Luis Buñuel Jean-Claude Carrière
Produced by	Serge Silberman
Starring	Fernando Rey Paul Frankeur Delphine Seyrig Stéphane Audran Bulle Ogier Jean-Pierre Cassel Julien Bertheau Milena Vukotic
Cinematography	Edmond Richard
Edited by	Hélène Plemiannikov
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release dates	15 September 1972 (1972-09-15) (France) 13 April 1973 (1973-04-13) (Italy) 21 April 1973 (1973-04-21) (Spain)
Running time	101 minutes
Countries	France Italy Spain
Languages	French Italian Spanish
Budget	$800,000
Box office	$286,916^[1]

The film consists of several thematically linked scenes: five gatherings of a group of bourgeois friends, and the four dreams of different characters. The beginning of the film focuses on the gatherings, while the latter part focuses on the dreams, but both types of scenes are intertwined. There are also scenes involving other characters, such as two involving a Latin American female terrorist from the fictional Republic of Miranda. The film's world is not logical: the bizarre events are accepted by the characters, even if they are impossible or contradictory.

The film was both a critical and commercial success. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film,^[3] and BAFTA Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Audran) and Best Original Screenplay (Buñuel, Carrière).

Plot

A bourgeois couple, François and Simone Thévenot, accompany François's colleague Don Rafael Acosta, the ambassador from the South American nation of Miranda, and Simone's sister Florence, to the house of the Sénéchals, the hosts of a dinner party. Once they arrive, Alice Sénéchal is surprised to see them and explains that she expected them the following evening and has no dinner prepared. The would-be guests then invite Alice to join them for dinner at a nearby inn.

Arriving at the inn, the party finds it locked. They knock and are reluctantly invited in by a waitress who mentions that the restaurant is under new management. Inside, there are no diners, and the prices on the menu are disconcertingly low. The party hears wailing from an adjoining room and discovers a vigil for the corpse of the manager, who died a few hours earlier. The party is told that the coroner is coming soon, but they hurriedly depart.

Later, at the Embassy of Miranda, Acosta meets with François and Alice's husband Henri to discuss the proceeds of a large cocaine deal. During the meeting, Acosta sees a young woman selling clockwork-animal toys on the footpath outside the embassy. He shoots one of the toys with a rifle and the woman runs off. He explains that she is part of a Maoist Mirandan terrorist group that's been targeting him for months.

Two days later, the bourgeois friends attempt to have lunch at the Sénéchals', but Henri and his wife escape to the garden to have sex instead of joining them. One of the friends take their unexplained absence to mean that the Sénéchals know the police are coming and have left to avoid arrest for their involvement in drug trafficking. The party again leaves in a panic.

When the Sénéchals return from the garden, their friends are gone, but they meet a bishop who has donned their gardener's clothing. They throw him out, but when he returns wearing his bishop's robes, they embrace him with deference. The bishop asks to work for them as their gardener. He tells them about his childhood — that his parents were murdered by arsenic poisoning and that the culprit was never apprehended.

The women visit a teahouse just as it has run out of all beverages – tea, coffee, and milk – although it finally transpires that they do have water. While they are waiting, a soldier tells them about his childhood: how after his mother's death his cold-hearted father sent him to military school. The ghost of the soldier's mother informed him that the man was not his real father but his father's killer; they had dueled over his mother. Following the ghost's request, the soldier killed the culprit with poison.

Simone meets Acosta at his apartment. They are having an affair but are interrupted by a visit from her husband, whereupon she makes a convenient excuse and leaves with him. Acosta is next visited by the same terrorist from earlier, who has come to kill him. He ambushes and chastises her, then tells her to leave when she refuses his sexual advances; his agents capture her and take her away.

Several abortive dinner parties ensue; interruptions include the arrival of a group of army officers and enlisted men, who join the dinner only to be called away for alarmingly close military maneuvers, the colonel inviting everyone to his house, only for the revelation that the colonel's dining-room is a stage set in a theatrical performance for an audience that is angry with the actors for not knowing their lines (which turns out to be Henri's dream; when they later go to the colonel's dinner party, it's all normal). At the colonel's party, the ambassador gets grilled about his policies in Miranda by everyone there, which leads to the ambassador's shooting of the colonel after he insults the nation of Miranda and slaps the ambassador (which turns out to be the dream of François). The priest/gardener goes to the house of a dying man, which is the man that killed his family. After he confesses to the murder, the priest shoots him with a shotgun. At Alice and Henri's place, they are arrested, to improve the police's public image. During this time, the police electrocute a man by placing him in a piano. The friends are then released by the ghost of the solider's dead dad. The police chief wakes up from the dream that the friends are getting released, and they're actually released by the Interior Minister calling. The film ends with them having dinner at Henri and Alice's house again, where they get their summary execution by the terrorists, who just break into their house (which turns out to be Rafael's dream). Most if not all of these scenes turn out to be dream sequences in which ghosts make frequent appearances.

A recurring scene throughout the film, of the six people walking silently and purposefully on a long, isolated country road, is also the final sequence.

Cast

• Fernando Rey as Rafael Acosta
• Paul Frankeur as François Thévenot
• Delphine Seyrig as Simone Thévenot
• Bulle Ogier as Florence Thévenot
• Stéphane Audran as Alice Sénéchal
• Jean-Pierre Cassel as Henri Sénéchal
• Julien Bertheau as Monsignor Dufour, the Bishop
• Milena Vukotic as Inès, the Sénéchals' maid
• Claude Piéplu as the Colonel
• Maria Gabriella Maione as the female terrorist
• Muni as the peasant
• Michel Piccoli as the Minister of the Interior
• Pierre Maguelon as Brigadier Sanglant
• François Maistre as Commissaire Delecluze
• Jacques Rispal as the Gendarme
• Christian Baltauss as Lt. Hubert de Rochcahin
• Amparo Soler Leal as Rochcahin's mother
• Georges Douking as the gardener
• Maxence Mailfort as the dreaming Sergeant
• Alix Mahieux as the Colonel's wife
• Bernard Musson as the Tea Room waiter

Production

Pre-production

After having announced that Tristana (1970) would be his last film because he felt he was repeating himself,^[4] Luis Buñuel met with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière and discussed the topic of repetition. Shortly afterwards, Buñuel met with film producer Serge Silberman, who told him an anecdote about having forgotten about a dinner party and being surprised to find six hungry friends show up at his front door. Buñuel was suddenly inspired, and Silberman agreed to give him a $2,000 advance to write a new script with Carrière, combining Silberman's anecdote with the idea of repetition. Buñuel and Carrière wrote the first draft in three weeks and finished the fifth draft by the Summer of 1971, originally titled Bourgeois Enchantment. Silberman was finally able to raise the money for the film in April 1972, and Buñuel began pre-production.^[5][6]

Buñuel cast many actors whom he had worked with in the past, such as Fernando Rey and Michel Piccoli, and catered their roles to their personalities. He had more difficulty casting the female leads and allowed actresses Delphine Seyrig and Stéphane Audran to choose which parts they would like to play, before changing the script to better suit the actresses. Jean-Pierre Cassel auditioned for his role and was surprised when Buñuel cast him after simply glancing at him once.^[7]

Filming and editing

Filming began on 15 May 1972, and lasted for two months with an $800,000 budget. In his usual shooting style, Buñuel shot few takes and often edited the film in camera and during production. Buñuel and Silberman had a long-running and humorous argument as to whether Buñuel took one day or one and a half days to edit his films.^[8]

On the advice of Silberman, Buñuel used video playback monitors on the set for the first time in his career, resulting in a vastly different style than any of his previous films, including zooms and travelling shots instead of his usual close-ups and static camera framing.^[6] It also resulted in Buñuel's being more comfortable on set, and in limiting his already minimal direction to technical and physical instructions. This frustrated Cassel, who had never worked with Buñuel before, until Rey explained that this was Buñuel's usual style and that since they were playing aristocrats their movements and physical appearance were more important than their inner motivation.

Buñuel once joked that whenever he needed an extra scene he simply filmed one of his own dreams. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie includes three of Buñuel's recurring dreams: a dream of being on stage and forgetting his lines, a dream of meeting his dead cousin in the street and following him into a house full of cobwebs, and a dream of waking up to see his dead parents staring at him.^[8]

Reception

Critical response

The film was a box office hit in both Europe and the US, and critically praised.^[8] Roger Ebert called it a comedy but noted that Buñuel’s comedies were “more like a dig in the ribs, sly and painful.”^[9] Robert Benayoun said that it was "perhaps [Buñuel's] most direct and most 'public' film".^[10] Vincent Canby wrote in his 1972 review of the film, “In addition to being extraordinarily funny and perfectly acted, The Discreet Charm moves with the breathtaking speed and self-assurance that only a man of Buñuel’s experience can achieve without resorting to awkward ellipsis.”^[11] Buñuel later said that he was disappointed with the analysis that most film critics made of the film.^[10] He also disliked the film's promotional poster, depicting a pair of lips with legs and a derby hat. ^[8]

Buñuel and Silberman travelled to the US in late 1972 to promote the film. Buñuel did not attend his own press screening in Los Angeles and told a reporter at Newsweek that his favorite characters in the film were the cockroaches (which appear in one of the dream sequences). While visiting LA, Buñuel, Carrière and Silberman were invited to a lunch party by Buñuel's old friend George Cukor, and other guests included Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, George Stevens, Rouben Mamoulian, John Ford, William Wyler, Robert Mulligan and Robert Wise.^[12] (resulting in a famous photograph of the directors together, other than an ailing Ford). Fritz Lang was unable to attend, but Buñuel visited him the following day and received an autographed photo from Lang, one of his favorite directors.^[13]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film maintains a rating of 98% based on 59 reviews, and an average rating of 8.5/10, with the consensus: "An intoxicating dose of the director's signature surrealist style, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie represents Buñuel at his most accessible."^[14] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 93 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".^[15]

Awards and nominations

Award	Year	Category	Nominee	Result
Academy Awards^[3]	1973	Best Foreign Language Film	France	Won
		Best Original Screenplay	Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière	Nominated
BAFTA Awards^[16]	1974	Best Film	The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie	Nominated
		Best Direction	Luis Buñuel	Nominated
		Best Actress	Stéphane Audran	Won
		Best Original Screenplay	Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carrière	Won
		Best Sound	Luis Buñuel, Guy Villette	Nominated
French Syndicate of Cinema Critics	1973	Prix Méliès	The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie	Won
Golden Globe Awards^[17]	1973	Best Foreign-Language Film	The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie	Nominated
Nastro d'Argento	1974	Best Foreign Director	Luis Buñuel	Nominated
National Board of Review Awards^[18]	1972	Top Foreign Language Films	The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie	Won
National Society of Film Critics Awards^[19]	1972	Best Film	The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie	Won
		Best Director	Luis Buñuel	Won
		Best Screenplay	Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carrière	Nominated
New York Film Critics Circle Awards^[20]	1973	Best Director	Luis Buñuel	Nominated
		Best Screenplay	Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carrière	Nominated

Oscars win

When the time came to release the film, producer Serge Silberman decided not to wait until May 1973 to premiere it at the Cannes Film Festival and instead released it in the fall of 1972 specifically to make it eligible for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Buñuel was famously indifferent to awards and jokingly told a reporter that he had already paid $25,000 in order to win the Oscar.^[21] The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie did win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and Silberman accepted on Buñuel's behalf at the ceremony. At the Academy's request, Buñuel posed for a photograph while holding the Oscar, but while wearing a wig and oversized sunglasses.^[12][22]

Home media

In June 2022, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie received a 4K digital restoration from StudioCanal for its 50th anniversary.^[23] The restoration was issued on Blu-ray and DVD formats.^[24]

Influence

Composer Stephen Sondheim announced a collaboration with playwright David Ives in October 2014, developing a new musical with a plot inspired by both The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and Buñuel's 1962 film The Exterminating Angel.^[25] Projected openings were deferred and production ceased at some point,^[26] but the composer held a September 2021 reading for Square One.^[27][28] Following the death of the composer, Ives announced the musical, renamed Here We Are, would have a limited engagement world premiere in September 2023 at The Shed.^[29]

See also

• Bourgeois personality
• List of fictional countries
• List of French submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of submissions to the 45th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film

References

1. "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie". The Numbers. Nash Information Services, LLC. Retrieved 27 January 2022.
2. The Scarecrow Video Movie Guide. Seattle: Sasquatch Books. 2004. p. 32. ISBN 978-1-57-061415-6.
3. "The 45th Academy Awards (1973) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 30 November 2011.
4. Wakeman 1987, p. 88.
5. Baxter 1994, p. 299.
6. Wakeman 1987, pp. 88–89.
7. Baxter 1994, p. 300.
8. Baxter 1994, p. 301.
9. Ebert, Roger (25 June 2000). "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved 10 February 2021.
10. Wakeman 1987, p. 89.
11. Canby, Vincent (14 October 1972). "'The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 28 December 2022.
12. Baxter 1994, p. 302.
13. Baxter 1994, p. 302-303.
14. "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie". Rotten Tomatoes.
15. "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie [re-release]". Metacritic.
16. "Film in 1974 | BAFTA Awards". awards.bafta.org. Retrieved 28 December 2022.
17. "Winners & Nominees 1973 - Foreign Film - Foreign Language". www.goldenglobes.com. Retrieved 28 December 2022.
18. "1972 Archives". National Board of Review. Retrieved 28 December 2022.
19. Weiler, A. H. (29 December 1972). "Movie by Bunuel Voted Best of '72". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 28 December 2022.
20. Weiler, A. H. (4 January 1973). "Critics Choose 'Cries and Whispers'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 28 December 2022.
21. Macnab, Geoffrey (8 June 2012). "The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie - A dinner that charts". The Independent. Retrieved 28 December 2022.
22. "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" Wins Foreign Language Film: 1973 Oscars. 11 July 2013. Retrieved 28 December 2022.
23. Hoberman, J. (23 June 2022). "Still Charming at 50: Luis Buñuel's Greatest Hit". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 December 2022.
24. "Studiocanal announces 50th anniversary 4K restoration of Luis Buñuel's 'The Discreet Charm of The Bourgeoisie'". The Arts Shelf. 24 May 2022. Retrieved 28 December 2022.
25. Voss, Brandon (14 October 2014). "Stephen Sondheim Is Working on a New Musical". The Advocate.
26. Wood, Alex (28 April 2021). "Sondheim's new musical Buñuel is reportedly no longer in development". WhatsOnStage.com. Retrieved 29 April 2021.
27. Stephen Sondheim Is Still Writing New Works, As "Company" Returns To Broadway, archived from the original on 22 December 2021, retrieved 16 September 2021
28. Major, Michael. "VIDEO: Nathan Lane Talks Reading of a New Sondheim Musical With Bernadette Peters". BroadwayWorld.com. Retrieved 16 September 2021.
29. Rosky, Nicole (16 March 2023). "Final Sondheim Musical, HERE WE ARE, Will Get World Premiere This Fall". BroadwayWorld.com. Retrieved 22 March 2023.

Bibliography

• Baxter, John (1994). Buñuel. London: Fourth Estate Limited. ISBN 978-1-85-702179-0.
• Wakeman, John (1987). World Film Directors, Volume 1. The H. W. Wilson Company. ISBN 978-0-82-420757-1.

Further reading

• Kinder, Marsha (1999). Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56831-5.

External links

• The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie at IMDb  
• The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie at AllMovie  
• The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie at Rotten Tomatoes  
• The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie at the TCM Movie Database