Probably the greatest short film in existence, and one of the most influential films ever. Preferable, in my view, to the longer follow-up *L'Age d'Or*, if only because *Un Chien Andalou* wastes no time trying to construct an even peripheral narrative. Just seventeen minutes of masterly, bizarre images and dream-logic. There's something gratifying in the fact that, in Bunuel's first film, Bunuel himself is practically the first thing we see. After he cuts open a woman's eyeball with a straight razor, we see him no more. A fine introduction.
The famous Slitting of the Eyeball constitutes Bunuel's clarion call for cinema to ATTACK the audience right at the organ with which it consumes the medium. From that point on, he never looked back during the next five decades of movie-making. You'll notice I've waited this long to mention his putative collaborator on *Un Chien Andalou*, Salvador Dali. That's because dragging him along is wearisome, and frankly, not even germane. This movie is strictly Bunuel's baby, and I don't care what the credits say: we get the guns, bugs, rotting carcasses, sexual fetishism, and idiotic clergymen that featured in almost every Bunuel film that followed this one. I'm not sure which part of the movie constituted Dali's dreams . . . but from where I'm sitting, *Andalou* strikes me as wholly Bunuelian.
It's also not as sloppy as some critics have made out. The images may be as disconnected as in any dream, but the logic behind them is rooted in the aesthetic philosophies of the great Surrealists like Artaud, Cocteau, and the rest of 'em. Don't kid yourself into believing that Bunuel was a lazy hack with a camera, the directorial equivalent of a homely poet scribbling free verse at your local Starbucks. He knew exactly what he was doing, and in this film, made each of those seventeen minutes count. There is a ruthless economy actuating all that kinky whimsy.
A landmark achievement that prodded the medium forward even as it announced the zenith of the Surrealist movement. 10 stars out of 10.
The famous Slitting of the Eyeball constitutes Bunuel's clarion call for cinema to ATTACK the audience right at the organ with which it consumes the medium. From that point on, he never looked back during the next five decades of movie-making. You'll notice I've waited this long to mention his putative collaborator on *Un Chien Andalou*, Salvador Dali. That's because dragging him along is wearisome, and frankly, not even germane. This movie is strictly Bunuel's baby, and I don't care what the credits say: we get the guns, bugs, rotting carcasses, sexual fetishism, and idiotic clergymen that featured in almost every Bunuel film that followed this one. I'm not sure which part of the movie constituted Dali's dreams . . . but from where I'm sitting, *Andalou* strikes me as wholly Bunuelian.
It's also not as sloppy as some critics have made out. The images may be as disconnected as in any dream, but the logic behind them is rooted in the aesthetic philosophies of the great Surrealists like Artaud, Cocteau, and the rest of 'em. Don't kid yourself into believing that Bunuel was a lazy hack with a camera, the directorial equivalent of a homely poet scribbling free verse at your local Starbucks. He knew exactly what he was doing, and in this film, made each of those seventeen minutes count. There is a ruthless economy actuating all that kinky whimsy.
A landmark achievement that prodded the medium forward even as it announced the zenith of the Surrealist movement. 10 stars out of 10.