Gwynne Edwards

Luis Buñuel was one of the great film-makers of the twentieth century. Gwynne Edwards analyses his work in the context of Buñuel's personal obsessions - sex, bourgeois values and religion. Luis Buñuel (1900-1983) was one of the truly great film-makers of the twentieth century. Shaped by a repressive Jesuit education and a bourgeois family background, he reacted against both, escaped to Paris, and was soon embraced by André Breton's official surrealist group. His early films are his most aggressive and shocking, the slicing of the eyeball in Un Chien andalou (1929) one of the most memorable episodes in the history of cinema. The Forgotten Ones (1950) and He (1952), made in Mexico, were followed, from 1960, in Spain and France, by the films for which he is best known: Viridiana (1961), Belle de jour (1966), Tristana (1970), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977). Gwynne Edwards analyses the films in the context of Buñuel's personal obsessions - sex, bourgeois values, and religion - suggesting that the film-maker experienced a degree of sexual inhibition surprising in a surrealist. GWYNNE EDWARDS is Professor of Spanish at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Blood Wedding is set in a village community in Lorca's Andalusia, and tells the story of a couple drawn irresistibly together in the face of an arranged marriage. This tragic and poetic play is the work on which his international reputation was founded. Like many of Lorca's passionate and intensely lyrical plays that focus on peasant life and the forces of nature, Blood Wedding combines innovatory dramatic technique with Spanish popular tradition. Methuen Drama Student Editions are expertly annotated texts of a wide range of plays from the modern and classic repertoires. As well as the complete text of the play itself, the volume contains a chronology of the playwright's life and work; an introduction giving the background to the play; a discussion of the various interpretations; notes on individual words and phrases in the text; and questions for further study.

Three classic Spanish plays, made famous by Shakespeare and Webster Two of the most famous and successful playwrights of Spain's Golden Age of playwriting were Lope de Vega (1562-1635) and Rojas Zorrilla (1607-48). From their prodigious output, the three plays in this volume, based on similar sources to Shakespeare's and Webster's versions, provide a fascinating comparison with their Jacobean counterparts. Lope's The Duchess of Amalfi's Steward, in contrast to Webster's play, focuses on the nobility of love, with characters who are complex and appealing. His Romeo-and-Juliet story, The Capulets and Montagues, is a fast-moving mixture of serious and comic, with an ending that will surprise and entertain. Rojas' treatment of Cleopatra, with its rich imagery, emphasises the love theme, held within a knot of jealous relationships. A full introduction by Gwynne Edwards sets the plays in context and provides a thorough study of the individual works.

A collection of extraordinary, playable translations from across the Latin American continent, including a new Mario Vargas Llosa play In La Chunga by Mario Vargas Llosa a young gambler down on his luck lends his girlfriend to the lady bar-keeper for the night to pay off a debt. Four years later the girl has neither been seen nor heard of, and the gamblers meet to speculate on the events of that fateful night. In Paper Flowers by Egon Wolff, Eva, a lonely middle class woman puts up a tramp for the night out of the kindness of her heart, only to find that he intends to occupy her life as well as her house, reducing her once and for all to his state. Medea in the Mirror by Jose Triana is an extraordinary re-setting of the Medea story in the Cuban revolution of 1959. As Maria, a young mulatto takes her revenge on Julian for abandoning her for someone else - the play becomes a mirror for the events that took place when Castro ousted the Batista regime.

Luis Brunel was one of the most startingly and controversal directors of world cinema. This study closely examines the major films right from the brilliant and scandalous "Un Chien Andalou" through the mature but equally damning late films like "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" and his last film "That Obscure Object of Desire." Edwards places the films in context and documents their origin and recurring themes.

A detailed interpretation of nine of the Spanish director's films focuses on the style, technique and themes of his work.