Books like My Last Sigh

Despite complains of losing his memory in later life, this was an utterly fascinating autobiography from arguably Spain's most important film-maker of the 20th century. Being in his early eighties at the time, and having a hell of a lot to remember, Buñuel is obviously awash with nostalgia, and it's written as if he felt wonderful lives went out with his generation. We move from image to image, just like his films, as he recollects on his childhood in Spain, his involvement with the surrealist movement in Paris, the Spanish Civil War, his time spent in America and Mexico (where he became a citizen), and of course, his films, although, he only really covers a small handful of them in detail. He had quite the friends list too - Garcia Lorca, Picasso, Dali, Magritte, Breton, Eluard to name but a few. He also got to hang out regularly with Charlie Chaplin whilst in America. It surprised me somewhat, that although he was a close friend of Dali, and admired his work greatly, he was scathing of him as a person on more than one occasion in the book, describing him as selfish, narcissistic and totally unreliable. There were others too. He touched on his likes & dislikes equally - he loved fried eggs served with Chorizo, smoking, a dry martini, and was a big fan of Russian literature, Fritz Lang, and the early work of Jean Renoir, but didn't have anything kind to say about Japanese culture, or writers Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Luis Borges. He even said of Dante's Divine Comedy as being useless, and even less poetic than the Bible, but was singing the praises of de Sade. If I'm honest, he did come across as a bit of a big-head at times, in a sort of Vladimir Nabokov way, but, on the other hand, he was also pleasingly unpretentious.My Last Sigh was, on the whole, a tremendous pleasure to read. I now feel like having a Buñuel movie night! - The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie followed by Belle de Jour.