The Films that Weren't – Buñuel and Renoir in Los Angeles

"...I spent two years in Hollywood from 1944 to 1946." 

— Luis Buñuel *

"Buñuel and Man Ray planned a scenario, THE SEWER OF LOS ANGELES, whose action took place on a mountain of excrement close to a highway and a dust desert. The scheme was abortive; but later Man Ray managed to collaborate on a Surrealist film DREAMS THAT MONEY CAN BUY." 

–– Francisco Aranda, Buñuel: A Critical Biography

"During this third sojourn in L.A., I often saw René Clair and Erich von Stroheim, whom I liked enormously. Resigned to the fact that I'd never make another movie of my own, I nonetheless still had the habit of jotting down ideas-for example, the lost little girl whose parents search for her everywhere and can't find her, while all the while she's actually right beside them (a situation I used in The Phantom of Liberty), or a movie with characters who act exactly like insects: a bee, a spider, and so on. One day while I was out driving, I discovered the enormous two-mile-long Los Angeles garbage dump, with everything from orange peels to grand pianos to whole houses. Smoke from the fires rose here and there; and at the bottom of the pit, on a small piece of land raised slightly from the piles of garbage, stood a couple of tiny houses inhabited by real people. Once I saw a young girl, perhaps fourteen or fifteen, emerge from one of the houses, and I fantasized her involved in a love affair in this infernal decor. Man Ray and I wanted to make a film about it, but we couldn't raise the money." 

–– Luis Buñuel, My Last Sigh





"Dudley Nichols and (Jean Renoir) were considering a new version of LES BAS FONDS (THE LOWER DEPTHS). It was to be set in Los Angeles, based on the contrast between the modern buildings and the crumbling houses of the Victorian era. This, too, never saw the light of day. Dudley did not understand why."  

— Jean Renoir, Ma vie et mes films

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* 1940: "Every last person believes that America will enter the war next year and I hope to be at a distance from it. I can see myself defending the American flag in Hong Kong or resting for a few years in a concentration camp, and of course I'm getting out of here." L.B.