Anne-Marie Deschodt
A virtuous young woman becomes the target of the schemes of an amoral womanizer who is in the habit of wooing women and killing their lovers and husbands in duels. When she finally succumbs to him, she discovers his true nature, and her newly awakened joy in passion turns to dust.
This Surrealist film, with a title referencing the Communist Manifesto, strings together short incidents based on the life of director Luis Buñuel. Presented as chance encounters, these loosely related, intersecting situations, all without a consistent protagonist, reach from the 19th century to the 1970s. Touching briefly on subjects such as execution, pedophilia, incest, and sex, the film features an array of characters, including a sick father and incompetent police officers.
Starting as an investigation, the film begins with the discovery of a murdered young woman. Gradually we go back in time to realize that this crime is altogether the logical continuation of a philosophy of life where neither sex nor death are taboo, and where a lust for pushing limits meets it ultimate conclusion.
Hélène Masson visits her friend Gérôme Savignat in the isolated rejuvenation clinic owned by Dr. Devilers and his partner Dr. Berbard. But after a series of tragic events, Hélène goes further in her investigation of the clinic.
In Luis Buñuel’s deliciously satiric masterpiece, an upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both actual and imagined.
A bourgeois couple check into a hotel. All seems fine until a man loses his nail clippers
