The Phantom of Liberty [Le fantôme de la liberté] **** (1974, Jean-Claude Brialy, Adolfo Celi, Michel Piccoli) – Classic Movie Review 9085

The Phantom of Liberty [Le fantôme de la liberté] (1974) is the penultimate film of Luis Buñuel (1900–1983), sandwiched between his great classics The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977).

Buñuel’s strong, stylish and provocative surrealist comedy film consists of a series of stream of consciousness vaguely related episodes, analysing morality and society. The most infamous sequence is the scene at the bourgeois dinner party when people sit on lavatories around a dinner table, retiring from time to time to eat in a small room, as well as the Serial Killer as Celebrity segment (sometimes cut).

It was advertised, rather desperately, as ‘Luis Bunuel’s kinkiest comedy’. It is hardly that, Belle de Jour probably is, but still some parts of the slightly uneven film are definitely more subtle, wittier and cleverer than others.

The Phantom of Liberty refers to The Communist Manifesto that begins: ‘A spectre [fantome] is stalking Europe, the spectre of Communism.’ Buñuel is fired up in attacking the bourgeois who fear freedom as well as what he saw as the blinkered Communist parties of the era.

Jean-Claude Brialy stars as M Foucauld, who at one point declares he is ‘sick of symmetry’ and places a large framed spider on the mantelpiece in best Buñuel surreal fashion.

It also stars Adolfo Celi, Michel Piccoli, Adriana Asti, Julien Bertheau, Paul Frankeur, Michael Lonsdale, Pierre Maguelon, François Maistre, Hélène Perdrière, Claude Piéplu, Jean Rochefort, Bernard Verley, Milena Vukotic and Monica Vitti.

The film is part of the Criterion Collection.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 9085

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