Review of Un Chien Andalou (1929) by Ricardo O — 17 Apr 2011

Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and first-time director Luis Buñuel set out to make a film that would contain as many shocking images as they could possibly imagine. The film that came out was Un Chien Andalou. The entire film is filled with dream-like sequences starting with the opening of a man with a razor (Luis Buñuel) that slices a woman's eye open - juxtaposed with a similarly shaped cloud covering the moon moving in the same direction as the knife through the eye. This is by far the most memorable and most shocking image in the film that still holds up to this day. Other memorable images in the film, though not nearly as shocking as they were in the late '20s, include a man with ants coming out of his palms - a literal visual pun of the French phrase "ants in the palms" that means someone is itching to kill; another is the same man pulling a piano with two priests (one of which is played by Dalí) and a air of rotting donkeys trying to reach the woman he has all of a sudden has started trying to sexually harass; there's also a transvestite on a bicycle; and images of severed limbs and gratuitous slayings. The film ends by forwarding in time to where the two lovers are deceased in their graves.

It was a landmark of early avant-garde cinema and is a film, which just about everyone remotely interested in cinema eventually encounters, especially one who is attending film school. Buñuel and Dalí were true surrealists who set out to cause scandal as much as possible with whatever they did. They were young men at the time fighting a society that they despised. Un Chien Andalou has become a film that many have tried to make sense of all the startling images but all the analysis that many have come up with have been in vain as Buñuel himself even said that it isn't supposed to make sense. He and Dalí simply came up with unique images that would possibly stir up the pot coming up with them on the spot as they went along filming. There's no real deep meaning to any of the images. They just simply are. Neither of them wanted images that could rationally be explained. There is no story and rationality involved in the film, just images.

Un Chien Andalou is a film that has been heavily influential in cinema. From the fact that it was one of the first films made with a shoestring budget and no studio-backed financing, predating independent filmmaker John Cassavetes and today's countless indie filmmakers; to the many other surrealist directors who have come and gone including Maya Deren and David Lynch. But the most important thing about this film is that it established the brilliant career of Luis Buñuel, one of the cinema's most unique visionaries. This is essential viewing. 10/10.

[Buñuel would follow this film up with the equally controversial film L'Age D'Or (also made with Salvador Dalí), become a journeyman going from Spain to America back to Spain, getting banned from Spain and moving to Mexico in the late '40s where he would re-emerge as one of the greatest talents around with his masterpiece Los Olvidados. With his reputation re-established he would continue in Mexico making notable films like Ãl, The Criminal Life Of Archibaldo de la Cruz, & Nazarín until he was invited back to Spain by dictator Franco to make a film of his choosing, to which he made Viridiana, a film that would get banned and once again Buñuel fled the country back to Mexico. He would remain the rest of his life living in Mexico occasionally filming in France and Spain. He made two other notable films during his Mexican period, The Exterminating Angel and Simon Of the Desert. He then went into what may be the most prolific era of his career making films in France such as Diary Of a Chambermaid, Belle de Jour, Tristana, The Discreet Charm Of the Bourgeoisie, The Phantom Of Liberty, and That Obscure Object Of Desire, after which he would permanently retire from filmmaking.].