Un chien andalou (1929) - film review

A man sharpens his cut-throat razor before using it to slice open a woman’s eye...   Eight years later, the same mysterious woman is fondled by another man.  When she resists his advances, a swarm of ants emerge from a hole in his hand...

Through a series of disturbing and perplexing images in which the banal encounters the bizarre, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí propel us through their nightmare world of surrealist fantasy.

A film which Buñuel’s insisted defied rational explanation both captivates and shocks its audience.  It is a world of pure imagination and creative genius, a disturbing nihilistic corruption of our own world, where even time is an abstract, malleable concept.

Buñuel and Dalí made this film with the intention of confounding its audience, in order to gain admission to the Surrealist Movement, a radical group of artists in Paris of the late 1920s.

With some shocking imagery (the opening scene being probably the most viscerally horrifying image ever to have been filmed), Buñuel was expecting the film would cause trouble and, at its Paris premiere, he filled his pockets with stones just in case there was a riot.

Buñuel would probably have been more shocked by the film’s unexpected popularity.  It ran for eight months and was declared a masterpiece, most notably by aspiring film director Jean Vigo.

Although the film has some truly unfathomable moments, it appears also to have some form of narrative structure and a strong underlying theme.  From the film’s second scene, it is plausible to conclude that the film is primarily a battle between the sexes.  A man seeks dominance over a helpless young woman.  He is consumed by passion; she clings to her virginity, symbolised by a lacrosse racket.  Spurned, her suitor suffers the torment of self-doubt and rejection.  Conflict, death, and a barren love ensue in quick succession, although this apparently takes places 16 years earlier (suggesting that the film is depicting a dream, not real life).   Conventional themes underpin a film that astounds with its daring and unique artistic vision.

© James Travers 2000

See also:
The life of Luis Buñuel
L’Age d’or
Viridiana
El Angel exterminador
Belle du jour
Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie
French fantasy films




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