"I didn't like the novel but I liked the character, and I agreed to do the film because there's a kind of purity in Robinson...I made it in the one way I knew how, wanting particularly to show man's solitude, the anguish of a man deprived of human society. I also wanted to deal with the subject of love-the lack of love or friendship...the dilemma of a human being without the companionship of man or woman" (Bu-uel, interviewed by Andr?Bazin). Bu-uel's Robinson Crusoe thus becomes a searingy ironic questioning of God's existence by the absolute non-believer whose most famous offscreen quip is, "I'm an atheist, thank God"; and an exploration of man's fate by the artist who said, "Through Surrealism I discovered that man is not free." Robinson's island will give way to the mansion in The Exterminating Angel.