Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
1972 · Luis Buñuel · The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie on Sightlines
4 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Notice the six of them walking down a country road. (camera)
This same shot returns several times across the film, always unexplained, the group moving toward the camera in flat daylight with no stated destination.
Payoff: The road refrain admits, without saying so, that the film runs on repetition rather than progress. In the reading: voyage-balade form. The reading calls this a voyage-balade: a walk that transforms nothing, movement that stops earning any outcome.
Count how many times these six try to sit down and eat. (staging)
Each attempt gets interrupted by something stranger than the last, and every time the group responds by simply adjusting and trying again later.
Payoff: Nothing here ever rises to catastrophe. It's always just another inconvenience to politely absorb.
Watch how seriously the cast treats every absurd interruption. (performance)
Nobody winks at the camera or signals that anything strange is happening, playing their social codes as entirely rational and binding no matter what.
Payoff: Playing it straight is exactly what makes the whole thing funny instead of merely strange.
Notice the lighting never changes when something turns strange. (light)
Richard keeps compositions clean and evenly lit throughout, giving the surrealist ruptures the exact same visual register as the ordinary dinner-party scenes.
Payoff: You never get a technical cue telling you something extraordinary just happened.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the road they keep walking down, and notice they never seem to mind not arriving.
A Deleuzian reading of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie →