Sentimentality and Aggression

This chapter brings together four auteurs who seem on the surface to be unrelated to one another. Stroheim and Buñuel are the least sentimental of the four, brutal and cynical by turns, they see the world as an ugly, hypocritical place. The section on Buñuel breaks from the usual essay form and is presented as an interview between the two authors. Bergman, the master of painful melodrama, peering at the faces of his characters, sees a kind of humanity in their suffering, a deep emotion. Nick Ray is the most sentimental of the group, though “saddest” might be more accurate. He sees and exposes the vulnerability of his characters, the weakness that underlies their aggression.