Not at all impressed with the Combustible Celluloid piece. I'm glad he gives Crusoe 3.5 out of 4 stars and calls it the "best Dafoe I've seen". Does the line you quote imply Bunuel would not have been able to continue making great movies in English, or in Hollywood? Bunuel proved capable of delivering masterpieces while working within several national cinemas.

To call Bunuel simply an "atheist" is reductive and simplistic. All Anderson had to do was read Bunuel's autobiography or watch Nazarin (Film of the Year award from the Intern. Catholic Cinema Office).

Anderson calls the Mexican films from the 50s "poorly financed", which gives the wrong impression that they have low production values. He writes "It wasn't until his 60s that he captured the world's attention with a series of Mexican and French-financed masterworks like Viridiana...". Actually, six of the 50s Mexican films played in competition at Cannes and they were critically acclaimed (three of them won awards: Nazarin, Los Olvidados and Ascent to Heaven). Morover, Viridiana (and Tristana also) was shot in Spain and financed mostly by a Spanish producer.

I understand though that Anderson is writing from an American perspective and Bunuel's Mexican films released in the 1950s got practically no distribution and no attention in the US. To this day, The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz, Nazarin, and others are available on dvd in England and not the USA (where at least 10% of the population are of Mexican descent). Go figure.

Anderson seems to have very superficial knowledge of a director he rightly calls "one of the 8 or 10 greatest directors of all time".