The film was the product of Deren's and Hammid's desire to create an avant garde personal film that dealt with devastating psychological problems, like the French surrealist films of the 1920s such as Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou ( 1929 ) and L ' Age d ' Or ( 1930 ).

Friedkin had asked his casting director to get a Spanish actor he had seen in Luis Buñuel's French film, Belle de Jour, who was actually Francisco Rabal, but Friedkin did not know his name, and Rey, who had played in several other films directed by Buñuel, was instead contacted.

In Buñuel's original script, the last shot was to feature the corpses " consumed by swarms of flies ".

" Buñuel's relationship with Dalí was somewhat more troubled, being tinged with jealousy over the growing intimacy between Dalí and Lorca and resentment over Dalí's early success as an artist.

Buñuel's interest in films was intensified by a viewing of Fritz Lang's Der müde Tod: " I came out of the Vieux Colombier completely transformed.

Through these interests, he met a number of influential people, including the pianist Ricardo Viñes, who was instrumental in securing Buñuel's selection as artistic director of the Dutch premiere of Manuel de Falla's puppet-opera El retablo de maese Pedro in 1926.

In Buñuel's words: " Our only rule was very simple: no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.

It was Buñuel's intention to shock and insult the intellectual bourgeoisie of his youth, later saying: " Historically the film represents a violent reaction against what in those days was called ‘ avant-garde ,’ which was aimed exclusively at artistic sensibility and the audience ’ s reason .” Against his hopes and expectations, the film was a huge success amongst the French bourgeoisie, leading Buñuel to exclaim in exasperation, " What can I do about the people who adore all that is new, even when it goes against their deepest convictions, or about the insincere, corrupt press, and the inane herd that saw beauty or poetry in something which was basically no more than a desperate impassioned call for murder?

Initially, Friedkin intended to cast Francisco Rabal as Charnier, but could not remember his name after seeing him in Luis Buñuel's Belle de jour ; he only knew the person he had in mind was a Spanish actor who had worked with Buñuel.

Actually the just mentioned Buñuel's movies were co-productions: Viridiana was Spanish-Mexican, and Tristana Spanish-French-Italian.

Screening of Buñuel's movie was banned by the authorities at that time, the Government of the Second Spanish Republic, for allegedly exploiting the misery in which the local people lived.

But her prettiness was what he had noticed first, and all the other things had come afterward: cruelty, meanness, self-will.

There was an artificial lake just out of sight in the first stand of trees, fed by a half dozen springs that popped out of the ground above the hillside orchard.

The first part of the road was steep, but it leveled off after the second bend and curled gradually into the valley.

No one was behind it, but in the rear wall of the office I noticed, for the first time, a door which had been left partially open.

The herd was watered and then thrown onto a broad grass flat which was to be the first night's bedground.

Once again, Tom Horn was the first and most likely suspect, and he was brought in for questioning immediately.

For Matilda, it was the first she had known in many a night.

Even the knowledge that she was losing another boy, as a mother always does when a marriage is made, did not prevent her from having the first carefree, dreamless sleep that she had known since they dropped down the canyon and into Bear Valley, way, way back there when they were crossing those other mountains.

Stevens was grunting over the last empty pocket when Russ abruptly rose and lunged toward Carmer's hat, which had tumbled half-a-dozen feet away when he first fell.

The Indian's arm whipped sidewise -- there was a flash of amber and froth, the crash of the bottle shattering against the side of the first car.

It was her first smile.

At first, I thought he was out of his head, talking wildly like this.

Hell, I gave him the first decent job he ever had, six, seven -- how many years ago was it, Rob ''??

Miss Langford ( her first name was Evelyn ) was an attractive girl.

School began in August, the hottest part of the year, and for the first few days Miss Langford was very lenient with the children, letting them play a lot and the new ones sort of get acquainted with one another.

It was just as well that the ignorant Dandy enjoyed himself to the hilt that first evening, for the room was to become his prison cell.

`` Bastards '', he would say, `` all I did was put a beat to that Vivaldi stuff, and the first chair clobbered me ''!!

In 1961 the first important legislative victory of the Kennedy Administration came when the principle of national responsibility for local economic distress won out over a `` state's-responsibility '' proposal -- provision was made for payment for unemployment relief by nation-wide taxation rather than by a levy only on those states afflicted with manpower surplus.

The first systematic thinking about this Pandora's box within Pandora's boxes was done four years ago by Fred Ikle, a frail, meek-mannered Swiss-born sociologist.

The smell at first was more surprising than unpleasant.

His collaboration with Washington, begun when he was the general's aide during the Revolution, was resumed when he entered the first Cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury.

The film they did after his return was an inconsequential bit of nothing titled Out Of This World, a satire on the Sinatra bobby-soxer craze.

Each successive movement in his growing was recorded on the unreeling film inside her.

Never a `` quick study '', he now made no attempt to learn his `` lines '' and many a mile of film was wasted, many a scene -- sometimes involving as many as a thousand fellow thespians -- was taken thirty, forty, fifty times because Miss Poitrine's co-star and `` helpmate '' had never learned his part.

Our last joint venture, Sainted Lady, a deeply religious film based on the life of Mother Cabrini, and timed so that its release date would coincide with the beatification of America's first saint in November, 1938, was a fiasco from start to finish.

By the time the film was released we were three million dollars over-spent, war was imminent and the public apparently had forgotten all about Mother Cabrini.

) The film was called The Diet of Worms, which I felt was just what Letch deserved.

It was a `` potboiler '' made on a `` shoestring '' and not the sort of film I like, as all I had to do was look blank and scream a great deal.

For example, when the film is only four minutes old, Neitzbohr refers to a small, Victorian piano stool as `` Wilhelmina '', and we are thereupon subjected to a flashback that informs us that this very piano stool was once used by an epileptic governess whose name, of course, was Doris ( the English equivalent, when passed through middle-Gaelic derivations, of Wilhelmina ).

Rudyard Kipling's scorn for the `` jargon '' of psychical research was altered somewhat when he wondered `` how, or why, had I been shown an unreleased roll of my life film ''??

This discovery of Melies was vastly more important than his sometimes dazzling, magician's tricks produced on film.

It was Porter, however, who produced the very first movie whose name has lived on through the half century of film history that has since ensued.

Before he was forty Griffith had created the art of the film.

Motion picture cameras had been installed to film the audience, the reservation list was being checked out name by name, and a special detail was already at work in the parking lot scrutinizing automobiles for a possible lead.

When arrested, he had the submarine secrets on a roll of candid camera film as well as anti-submarine secrets in Christmas gift wrapping, it was testified.

He said that drawings of the Dreadnought and printed details about the ship were found reproduced in an undeveloped roll of film taken from Lonsdale when he was arrested with the two civil servants outside the Old Vic theater Saturday afternoon, Jan. 7.

And it was interesting to observe that B.B.C.'s television film on Christmas Eve was The Bells Of St. Mary's.

Another source of NBC pride was its rare film clip of Bix Beiderbecke, but this view of the great trumpeter flew by so fast that a prolonged wink would have blotted out the entire glimpse.

Winning the 1951 Best Picture Oscar and numerous other awards, the film was directed by Vincente Minnelli, featured many tunes of Gershwin, and concluded with an extensive, elaborate dance sequence built around the An American in Paris symphonic poem ( arranged for the film by Johnny Green ), costing $ 500, 000.