Un chien andalou

I saw this recently n i am shocked at the violent content n nudity in a film made in 1929.

Candyman borrowed the scene where insects come out of a palm.

"Sitting comfortably in a dark room, dazzled by the light and the movement which exert a quasi-hypnotic power... fascinated by the interest of human faces and the rapid changes of place, [a] cultivated individual placidly accepts the most appalling themes...and all this naturally sanctioned by habitual morality, government, and international censorship, religion, dominated by good taste and enlivened by white humor and other prosaic imperatives of reality." - Luis Bunuel

Un Chien Andalou exists to shock the viewer of this stupor that Bunuel elucidates above. Freudian dream imagery, amorphous space/time, and absurdist humor combine in this drawn out mating ritual between a confused cyclist and the female he pursues. May be the most inventive fifteen minutes of film anywhere.

I'm not going to rate this film because all I can say is "What the heck?" - That's the G rated version of what I said. This very late silent is on the list of films people must see before they die? And the late Roger Ebert agreed??? It reminded me of a time in the late 80s when I was sitting on a bench at the Dallas Museum of Art waiting for my companion to return from the restroom and noticed that among the masterpieces there was hung a canvas with four squares of different colors painted on it. That's it. Nothing interesting done with perspective or lighting. A five year old could have done it if they could have managed to paint within the lines. How did it get here? Was it WHO painted it that made it view worthy? I didn't bother to go over and find out, so I can't tell you. I'd just say that this film reminds me of that. So some ants crawl around on someone's hand and somebody slits an eyeball. How does any of this relate to the human experience? I can't remember the last time I was so disappointed in a film I was expecting to like or at least be challenged by.

I get that it's not really trying to make a point. Surrealism as Dali and Bunuel were interested in it at that point wasn't about anything, wasn't making a statement, it's just a stream of (dream) consciousness/series of images intended, if anything, to baffle and/or upset the bourgeoisie. They succeeded. I'm pretty much bourgeoisie and I was baffled.

this movie may be dated in a certain sense, but the vitality and passion of its vicious rebellion against societal taboos and constraints still comes through full throttle. bunuel, master of cinematic/surrealist revolt, violates every boundary he can think of. a woman's eyeball is slashed open, her chest brutally groped, ants crawl out of a man's hand, etc. this is more of a curiosity than anything else, but I am a surrealism fanatic and love this along with Cocteau's "Blood of a Poet". the reviewers here who downplay it's value are simply wrong and probably decided in advance to dislike it to look different.

Even those who do not like Buñuel's "Un Chien Andalou" will probably never forget it once they see it. It's one of the weirder and more interesting films that you'll ever run across, and even aside from its significance, it would be worth seeing for the distinctive style and material.

It is also very well-crafted, despite its apparently chaotic narrative (or lack thereof). Even when it is impossible to attach meaning to some of the images, it seems clear that it has been filmed almost exactly as Buñuel and Dali intended. Even the music seems to have been chosen deliberately, and at times it complements the images surprisingly well.

While the exact meanings of many of the symbols are probably deliberately obscure, it strongly suggests some general themes such as desire, frustration, and the like. To attempt to analyze it carefully is almost certainly a mistake, and it is probably best taken as a dream or a dream-like series of events without the kinds of obvious connections that one might want to find.

Likewise, it's hard to determine just how good or how important it may be. The extreme disregard of cinema conventions is hard to evaluate now, in that the movie itself established some alternative conventions of a sort. The images themselves are often fascinating, sometimes unsettling or even off-putting, almost always interesting and suggestive.

Perhaps the one thing that can be said about such a movie without much risk of going astray is that almost anyone who has a real interest in cinema or cinema history will (or ought to) want to see "Un Chien Andalou" for himself or herself. Hearing it described by someone else really cannot adequately convey what it is like.