Le Fantôme de la Liberté (The Phantom of Liberty) (The Specter of Freedom)

Le Fantôme de la Liberté (The Phantom of Liberty) (The Specter of Freedom) (1974)

  • 88% of critics liked it
    (17 reviews)

  • 90% of users liked it
    (5,307 ratings)

One of Luis Buñuel's most episodic films, The Phantom of Liberty focuses on no one particular narrative. In the beginning, a man sells postcards of French tourist attractions, calling them "pornographic." A sniper in Montparnasse is hailed as a hero for killing passersby. A… More

In Theaters
Sep 11, 1974 Wide

Critic Reviews

  • Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

    A tour de force, a triumph by a director confronting almost impossible complications and contradictions and mastering them. It's very funny, all right, but remember: With Buñuel, you only laugh when it hurts.

  • Vincent Canby, New York Times

    The physical production is stunning to look at. The cast is large, first-rate, but the presence that dazzles us is that of the Old Master, just off screen, mercilessly testing our senses of sanity and humor.

  • Jessica Winter, Village Voice

    Albeit scattershot, Phantom does cohere as a satire of keeping up appearances in which everything is as it appears.

  • Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

    The challenging lack of a narrative center doesn't prevent this film from having a great deal to say about the modern world and its ambivalent grasp of freedom.

  • Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews

    Bunuel's most uninhibited venture though audacious and satisfying my Bunuel pangs, lacks a bite or enough charm to appeal to the masses.

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Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

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Featured Audience Ratings

  • Anthony L


    The Phantom of Liberty feels a bit like Monty Python's And Now for Something Completely Different but with meaning. It's as surreal as you'd expect from Bunuel but it is a little more current than a lot of his earlier work. I love the way everything is turned on its… More

  • Robert C


    There is a LOT going on in this film! Bunuel takes "modern" society to task in an a very ammusing, slightly dark but always insightful manner. I found it very interesting and had a few good chuckles along the way. Not my favorite Bunuel film...but well worth a watch.

  • Aditya G


    The Granddaddy of surrealist cinema directed his penultimate film at the age of 74. And, my goodness, what creativity at that age! What a grand accomplishment in cinema with one of the most radically unconventional films ever made! It is difficult to outline the greatness of "The… More

  • Pierluigi P


    Buñuel's dark sense of humour can make us not only witnesses but supporters of this derision to all institutions that rule society. A concatenation of segments that adress tragedies, misbehavings and formalisms with the same farcical tone. Possibly inspired by 'The Saragossa… More

  • Elvira B


    Buñuel's 1974 surrealist comedy is really a sequence of skits that mostly begin but never reach an ending, overlapping each other, completely without relation. All of them regard the different conventions and attitudes of society that Buñuel despised: he ridicules them, subverts… More

Read all 9 featured audience ratings

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Cast

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