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.Whenshe is finally killed by a passing car, her death can be seen in a variety ofways, one of which could well be linked to Buñuel s desire, as theall-powerful film-maker, to put an end to the kind of woman he was afraid of.This deep-seated anxiety was also embodied in an image common to bothDalí and Buñuel: that of the female praying mantis who, after mating,devours the male.Buñuel s fascination with insects is to be seen throughouthis work.During his student days at the Residencia de Estudiantes, hehad embarked on a course in Agricultural Engineering but had abandonedit in order to study at the Museum of Natural History under the guidanceof the celebrated entomologist, Ignacio Bolívar.Furthermore, Souvenirsentomologiques, by the famous French entomologist, J.H.Fabre, wouldalways figure among Buñuel s favourite books.As for the praying mantis and the black widow spider they fitted in perfectly with his association ofsex and death, and he doubtless discussed the matter with Dalí, for whomJean-François Millet s famous painting, Angelus, had a similar meaning.Inthe painting, a young man and a young woman stand facing each other in afield at the end of their day s work.Both are praying.The young man s headis bowed and he holds his hat in front of him, more or less at waist level.Thewoman too has her head bowed in prayer and her hands are clasped in front ofher breast.For Dalí the young man s hat concealed his erection, while theapparently passive and demure female was the virgin in waiting, about topounce on and devour him, emotionally if not physically.So obsessed withMillet s painting was Dalí that he produced a number of variations on it, as inHomage to Millet (1934), in which a mantis-like female holds a knife in herright hand and is clearly about to attack the man s exaggeratedly erect penis.There can be no doubt that Buñuel shared Dalí s ideas in this respect, and it is11On this topic, see Agustín Sánchez Vidal, El mundo de Buñuel (Zaragoza: Caja deAhorros de la Inmaculada de Aragón, 1993), 157 66. 66 GWYNNE EDWARDSno coincidence, therefore, that Un Chien andalou should end with a shot thatechoes the couple in Millet s painting.After a title, In the Springtime, whichseems to promise a happy future for the girl who has at last found her virilelover, the film s epilogue reveals them to be positioned opposite each otherand half buried in sand beneath a fierce sun, their eyes devoured by insects.Itis a final and powerful image of the extent to which, for Buñuel, sex anddeath were synonymous.12 Indeed, the film as a whole, in terms of itsportrayal of the male female relationship, in which the male is overwhelmedby sexual guilt and inhibition, is his first exercise in autobiography.The themes of sexual inhibition, guilt and frustration still preoccupiedBuñuel many years later in such films as Viridiana, Belle de jour and ThatObscure Object of Desire.In two of these films the male character whoembodies these preoccupations Don Jaime in Viridiana and Mathieu inThat Obscure Object is, significantly, an older man, played by the experi-enced Spanish actor Fernando Rey, who has himself observed that in bothcases the character is a form of Buñuel.13 Given the fact, however, that allthree films were made when Buñuel was himself much older, it is hardlysurprising that there should be a marked change of tone in the presentation ofthe issues mentioned above.In his sixties and especially during his seventies,the sexual hang-ups that had plagued him as a young man, and which foundsuch powerful expression in Un Chien andalou, proved to be less pressing, ashe has observed:[.] lately, my own sexual desire has waned and finally disappeared, evenin dreams.And I m delighted; it s as if I ve finally been relieved of a tyran-nical burden.(Buñuel, 49)The consequence was that, in channelling personal experience into his films,Buñuel was able to adopt a cooler, more ironic and even mocking tone inrelation to the portrayal of sexual behaviour, much as Cervantes had donewhen, at the age of almost sixty, he poked fun at the idealism of his youth inthe comic figure of Don Quixote.In Viridiana Don Jaime is a widower whose wife died on their weddingnight some twenty years before.Since that time, racked by a sense of guilt aswell as loss, he has sought in a variety of ways to keep her memory alive,playing on the harmonium music that she liked, and keeping her clothes,including her wedding-dress, in a large wooden chest.In an attempt to getcloser to her, he even puts her shoes on his feet and her corset around hiswaist.His worship of his wife s memory has, in effect, become his religion, tothe exclusion of all else, including the maintenance of his estate, which has12See Sánchez Vidal, 109 20 on the image of the praying mantis in Dalí and Buñuel.13See Bruce Babington and Peter William Evans, The Life of the Interior: Dreams inthe Films of Luis Buñuel , Critical Quarterly, 27, no.4 (1985), 13. A SURREALIST IN CHAINS 67fallen into serious decline
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