Un chien andalou

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.

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.

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.

I find it hilarious that so many people who have posted here are even attempting to place any meaning whatsoever into this film's imagery! The only point to be made in this movie is that there should be no point to be made. Any significance placed onto anything contained in this film is a complete fabrication of the narrow-minded viewer who believes movies are only made to carry some message. That is the genius of Bunuel and Dali. They were surrealists. The point of surrealism is that there is no point, no meaning whatsoever.

Personally, you all may dissect (pun intended) and pore over this great film if you please, but you are fools in the eyes of the (deceased) filmmakers for doing so.

"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.