Fifty / Fifty

2022 marks the 50th anniversary of The Cinematheque. While the bulk of our birthday cake was served in August (our month of incorporation), some of the best pieces were saved for this “Fifty / Fifty” series, which spotlights landmark works of arthouse cinema that are also joining the quinquagenarian club this year.

September 15 (Thursday) September 17 (Saturday) September 18 (Sunday) September 23 (Friday) 6:30 pm 8:35 pm 6:30 pm 8:15 pm

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

(Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie) France 1972 Luis Buñuel 101 min. DCP

New Restoration

“A masterpiece … Buñuel has arrived at a form that covers his full range, permits him to say anything—a form that literally and figuratively lets him get away with murder.”

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Sight and Sound

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is an Oscarwinning (Best Foreign Film, 1972) assault on a ruling class living in fear of its imminent demise and clinging stubbornly to its empty rituals. Modifying and updating the central motif of Buñuel’s made-in-Mexico The Exterminating Angel (1962), which had a group of bourgeoisie mysteriously unable to leave a polite dinner party, Discreet Charm sees its privileged protagonists, five fashionable French and a fascist Latin American ambassador, constantly thwarted in their efforts to sit down to a civilized meal. Guests show up on the wrong day; restaurants are out of everything on the menu; terrorists burst in; dreams—and dreams within dreams— intrude, including that ultimate bourgeois nightmare: a dinner party where everyone actually says what they think! Arriving in a brand-new anniversary restoration, Buñuel’s biggest critical and commercial success is “an avant-garde sitcom” (J. Hoberman, New York Times) still riotous 50 years later.