Luis Bunuel’s 1929
collaboration with Salvador Dali, Un Chien Andalou, is one of the most famous
of silent shorts and, with all the surrealist qualities, still has the power to
shock and provoke. Absent of narrative and inspired by a series of dreams the
two had, there’s more legitimately iconic symbolism in this sixteen-minute short than many
filmmakers are able to achieve in an entire lifetime (Bunuel and Dali were both
in their twenties, yet to reach their respective creative peaks). Imagery such
the razor across the eye, the nude woman, ants emerging from a hand, the
death’s-head moth and the man dragging two pianos (containing dead donkeys and
stone tables of the Ten Commandments) with two priests attached by ropes, for
all their stark clarity, is played as a blank canvas completely open for
interpretation. Deliberately designed to antagonize the intellectuals and
bourgeoisie of its day, I believe that a similarly bizzare reception (ironically,
to Bunuel’s dismay, his “avantgarde cine” targets embraced the picture) would
meet any screening of Un Chien Andalou.
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