Un chien andalou
Tags: absurd, cult, avant garde, psychedelic, murder

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with a title card reading "Once upon a time". A middle-aged man (Luis Buñuel) sharpens his razor at his balcony door and tests the razor on his thumb. He then opens the door, and idly fingers the razor while gazing at the moon, about to be engulfed by a thin cloud, from his balcony. There is a cut to a close-up of a young woman (Simone Mareuil) being held by the man as she calmly stares straight ahead. Another cut occurs to the moon being overcome by the cloud, then a cut to a close up of a hand slitting the eye of an animal with the razor, and the vitreous humour spills out from it.
The subsequent title card reads "eight years later". A slim young man (Pierre Batcheff) bicycles down a calm urban street wearing what appears to be a nun's habit and a striped box with a strap around his neck. A cut occurs to the young woman from the first scene, who has been reading in a sparingly furnished upstairs apartment. She hears the young man approaching on his bicycle and casts aside the book she was reading (revealing a reproduction of Vermeer's The Lacemaker). She goes to the window and sees the young man lying on the curb, his bicycle on the ground. She emerges from the building and attempts to revive the young man.
Later, the young woman assembles pieces of the young man's clothing on a bed in the upstairs room, and concentrates upon the clothing. The young man appears near the door. The young man and the young woman stare at his hand, which has a hole in the palm from which ants emerge. A slow transition occurs focusing on the armpit hair of the young woman as she lies on the beach and a sea urchin at a sandy location. There is a cut to an androgynous young woman, with bobbed hair and dressed in rather masculine attire, in the street below the apartment. She pokes at a severed human hand with her cane while surrounded by a large crowd and a policeman.
The crowd clears when the policeman places the hand in the box previously carried by the young man and gives it to the young woman. The androgynous young woman contemplates something happily while standing in the middle of the now busy street clutching the box. She is then run over by a car and a few bystanders gather around her. The young man and the young woman watch these events unfold from the apartment window. The young man seems to take sadistic pleasure in the androgynous young woman's danger and subsequent death, and as he gestures at the shocked young woman in the room with him, he leers at her and grasps her breasts.
The young woman resists him at first, but then allows him to touch her as he imagines her nude from the front and the rear. The young woman pushes him away as he drifts off and she attempts to escape by running to the other side of the room. The young man corners her as she reaches for a racquet in self-defense, but he suddenly picks up two ropes and drags two grand pianos containing dead and rotting donkeys, stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments, two pumpkins, and two rather bewildered priests (played by Jaime Miravilles and Salvador Dalí) who are attached by the ropes. As he is unable to pursue, the young woman escapes the room. The young man chases after her, but she traps his hand, which is infested with ants, in the door. She finds the young man in the next room, dressed in his nun's garb in the bed.
The subsequent title card reads "around three in the morning". The young man is roused from his rest by the sound of a door-buzzer ringing (represented visually by a martini shaker being shaken by a set of arms through two holes in a wall). The young woman goes to answer the door and does not return. Another young man, whom we see only from behind, dressed in lighter clothing, arrives in the apartment, gesturing angrily at him. The second young man forces the first one to throw away his nun's clothing and then makes him with his face to the wall, as if in disgrace.
The subsequent title card reads "Sixteen years ago." We see the second young man's face for the first time (and discover that he is also played by Pierre Batcheff) as he admires the art supplies and books on the table near the wall and forces the first young man to hold two of the books as he stares at the wall. The first young man eventually shoots the second young man when the books abruptly turn into pistols. The second young man, now in a meadow, dies while swiping at the back of a nude female figure which suddenly disappears into thin air. A group of men come and carry his corpse away.
The young woman returns to the apartment and sees a death's-head moth. The first young man sneers at her as she retreats and wipes his mouth off his face with his hand. The young woman very nervously applies some lipstick in response. Subsequently, the first young man makes the young woman's armpit hair attach itself to where his mouth would be on his face through gestures. The young woman looks at the first young man with disgust, and leaves the apartment sticking her tongue out at him.
As she exits her apartment, the street is replaced by a coastal beach, where the young woman meets a third man with whom she walks arm in arm. He shows her the time on his watch and they walk near the rocks, where they find the remnants of the first young man's nun's clothing and the box. They seem to walk away clutching each other happily and make romantic gestures in a long tracking shot. However, the film abruptly cuts to the final shot with a title card reading "In Spring," showing the couple buried in beach sand up to their elbows, motionless and perhaps dead.

Review: Un Chien Andalou(1929) like the rest of Bunuel's early works experiments with use of film image and surrealism.
Un Chien Andalou(1929) was an artful collaboration between two surrealistic masters in Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali.
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 BunuelUn Chien Andalou exists to shock the viewer of this stupor that Bunuel elucidates above.
I kept coming back to the gallery few more times and I never was tired of both short films.The inspiration for "Un Chien Andalou" began with the dreams of two young rebellious men, the artists and the friends, Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali.
It is also could be in the establishing and following by both artists the certain rules, "No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind will be accepted...We had to open all doors to the irrational and keep only those images that surprised us without trying to explain why." Perhaps, Dali and Bunuel intended their film to be experienced directly, on the visceral level, and not analyzed by the viewers..
As movies get more and more codified it's a real joy to watch something like this, utterly freewheeling.What makes 'Un chien andalou' exciting for me is that it's so replete with imagery that an instinctual human fear of anarchy kicks in and you can't help trying to piece it all together somehow, as if it were one of those 3D art posters and if you stared at it long enough you'd finally "get it." Yet it just can't be understood in any conventional way, and anyone who tells you otherwise is simply trying to push their own subconscious on you.I don't have anything against Wagner but this film should definitely be watched without the distraction of the score that Buñuel added later..
After that , there take place several bizarre events such as a man has a hole in the palm from which ants emerge , it is shown literally ; later on , a man pulls a piano along with the tablets of the Ten Commandments and a dead donkey and two priests being dragged with the piano (a priest is Salvador Dalí) ; a woman pokes at a severed hand in the street with his cane (legend has it that the severed hand used in the street scene was a real hand, and Dali convinced a man to cut it off in exchange for enough money to buy lunch) , among others .Abstract film that marked strong polemic in the epoch when it was realised , especially its sliced eyeball at the beginning , and still packs a punch even nowadays .
After editing the feature , Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí didn't know what to do with it , as an acquaintance introduced Buñuel to Man Ray, who had just finished Les Mystères du château Dé and was looking for a second film to complete the program , the two movies premiered together at the Studio Ursulines ; it made a deep impression on the Surrealist Group, who welcomed Buñuel into their ranks .
With financial help from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, he made his first film , this 17-minute "Un Chien Andalou" (1929), and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its disturbing images and surrealist plot .
This is sort of like a home movie based on dreams by a psychotic sadist--with no comprehensible plot, violent and repellent images (such as a close up of an eyeball being slashed by a razor, a severed hand laying in the street, a woman being run over, a pointless murder, etc.).
In fact, I can't help but think that the film's creators, Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, just created this movie as a way to laugh at intellectuals and wannabes who just ate this crap up and declared it to be "high art".By the way, this film is highly reminiscent of Jean Cocteau's BLOOD OF A POET--another home movie full of really interesting images (but zero plot) that is adored by the elite.
Not even by a surrealistic country mile.Over the years I have heard nothing but loud applause and excited praise for this silent-era film which is held up in such high-regard and considered to be the very first of its kind to emerge from the early 20th Century's "Surrealist Movement" of film-making.Sure, 86 years ago Un Chien Andalou may have totally shocked and disgusted its audience (as it was clearly intended to do).
But, today, for the jaded, "seen-it-all" viewer, this 16-minute short only succeeded in its demented, little mission by holding my attention for but a few brief sequences.Directed by Spanish, avant-garde, film-maker, Luis Bunuel, Un Chien Andalou's story was hatched from the unhinged ideas that seeped out of Salvador Dali's head..
The film 'Un chien Andelou' is an early Bunuel film and is one that adopts the surrealist style which was very popular for the late twenties.Watching this film is like watching a strange dream that you once had and one that didn't follow any sort of logical story line.
'Un Chien Andalou', the (in)famous collaboration between cinematic provocateur Luis Bunuel and arch-Surrealist Salvador Dali, is one of those films that you simply have to see.
This is, in part, due to the singularly unique viewing experience it affords as well as a reflection of the status it has achieved since it was first shown in 1929.The story goes that (once upon a time) Bunuel and Dali were having a conversation about some dreams they had recently had (a cloud "cutting" the moon and ants in a hand respectively) which inspired them to make a film loaded with provocative and shocking imagery and a wholly confounding anti-narrative designed to be resistant to rational explanation and to confront the complacency of the audience.
This is because, despite the dream-like appearance of the film, 'Un Chien Andalou' is actually the result of Bunuel and Dali's careful (and employing all their rational faculties) subversion of cinematic conventions to contradict normal notions of temporal cause-and-effect.
"Once upon a time..." Spanish director Luis Buñuel's directorial debut 'Un Chien Andalou' (An Andalusian Dog), collaborated with the prominent artist and close friend Salvador Dali, is a seventeen-minute silent, stark and surrealist film.
Excitedly, Buñuel responded to Dali, "There's the film, let's go and make it!" The entire film plays out as a dream, albeit not a pleasant one, as uncanny images appear and disappear only to be followed by even more bizarre ones moments afterwards: a thinly-veiled cloud cuts across the moon as a straight razor cuts through the eye of a middle-aged woman (Simone Mareuil), although it was actually a calf's eye in reality.
Surreal, avant-garde, call it what you will – Bunuel and Dali certainly knew how to create an eye-catching image, and we'll never know what other absurdities they might have dreamed up together (geddit?) if they hadn't fallen out.
"Un Chien Andalou" (or "An Andalusian Dog," a title which has effectively nothing to do with the film) is virtually a trailer to Luis Bunuel's entire career, containing all the themes the surrealist would later tackle in masterpiece after masterpiece.
This bizarre 1929 short is still polemic in the present days, and I believe this was the intention of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali when they produced this film, i.e., to become well-known by the artistic world.
This movie has one of the strongest scenes ever, with a woman's eye being cut by a razor blade, followed by surreal, irrational and disconnected images.
If you expect to see a film, you will be disappointed - Un Chien Andalou just comes across as some kind of demented practical joke by its masterminds, Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali.
Some people say that it is full of hidden meanings, but in my personal opinion, it is just one big farce by two artists who knew they would one day achieve great things.You should certainly see it if you want to call yourself an educated film viewer; just don't expect it to be classic Bunuel genius like "Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie" for example.
Un Chien Andalou is a compelling silent-movie depicting the nonsensical dreams of Luis Bunuel and collaborator Salvador Dali.
Director Louis Buñuel, collaborating with artist Salvador Dalí, delivers a series of perplexing images, some of which are extremely disturbing (the slicing of a woman's eye with a straight razor), some of which are daring (the fondling of a naked pair of breasts and a bare ass), and many of which are downright bizarre (a man pulling two pianos weighed down by dead donkeys and a pair of priests!?!).Other memorable imagery includes ants crawling out of a hole in the palm of a man's hand, an androgynous woman poking a severed hand with a stick, and a guy losing his mouth only to have it replaced by the pubic hair from a lady's armpit.
'Un Chien Andalou' successfully painted this age-old picture in a daring new language.Whether a grinning male watches from his window as an androgynous woman with a severed hand in a box is mowed down by a car, or a woman shuts her aggressively advancing partner's hand in the door to trap him (a hand which is bleeding ants, stigmata-style), or a man is chastised for his lust by a father-figure (who is revealed as the woman's new lover and is shot to death by the original) -- or whether, infamously and iconically, a hand (Buñuel's, in a brief cameo) slashes a woman's eyeball from its socket (is the razor the penis and the eyeball the hymen?), this film's tone is one of extreme sexual anxiety.
Although it's best known for the infamous eye-slicing scene, Bunuel and Dali's film is really more of a series of visual rhymes tied together with dream logic where space and time are irrelevant.
Bizarre, and Fascinatingly So. In the late 1920's, surrealists Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel collaborated on this fabulously bizarre short film.Following what barely represents a narrative, "Un chien anadolou" feels like a dream or, rather, a nightmare, for it manages to be quite terrifying in places.
Weird and cool, its easy to see the impact this dreamlike work of art and other Bunuel films had on David Lynch's career.Based on two strange dreams Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel had, the movie lacks a narrative and is hard to explain, its more like an abstract experience the viewer will understand only after watching it.Its a little more interesting than I expected it to be.
Oscar-nominee Luis Buñuel (That Obscure Object of Desire, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), the father of film surrealism, joins with another surrealist, Salvador Dalí, in his first film as a director.The film opens with a man cutting a woman's eyeball, but it get stranger as we see ants come out of a man's hand, and, well, it just keeps getting more bizarre.Don't look for a plot as it is more like free association, where psychoanalytic patients are invited to relate whatever comes into their minds during the analytic session, and not to censor their thoughts.Programmed for a short run, this film lasted eight months in the theater..
One of the most famous short films in the world is definitely Luis Buñuel's debut, "Un Chien Andalou" (literally, "An Andalusian Dog"), an not without a reason, as this 16 minute film's influence extents beyond the cinema and is considered a milestone of the surrealist movement of the late 20s.
The brainchild of director Luis Buñuel and painter Salvador Dalí, "Un Chien Andalou" has become an important work of art, necessary to understand the work of these two masters of surrealism, and their influence over the surrealist movement.Conceived as a series of scenes without an apparent order, the film has no explicit plot and instead it follows a dream logic where the "dreams" share only actors, characters, themes or motifs, without being explicitly "connected".
While unsettling at times and definitely aggressive, the movie is a joy to watch even when the experience is more akin to watch moving canvas rather than a movie the way we are used to it.The film is hard to understand, and ambiguous enough to the point that probably only Buñuel and Dalí knew exactly what it was supposed to mean.
Probably the first shocker of Cinema's history, this disturbing display of gore was Bunuel invitation to change our own perspective, to look at movies from the other side of the curtain, from behind our eyes whatever it means.The eye-moment breaks the ultimate taboo by depicting the most repulsive thing ever for a viewer, it equals watching a castration from a man's perspective.
Change your perspective; "welcome to my world", Bunuel didn't miss his entrance in the Pantheon of great directors, paving the way for a new surrealistic art-form.Surrealism consisted on expressing some superior forms of reality essentially lying on an association of dream-like images, faithful to Freudian free associations of ideas and the natural thinking process of the mind.
The images are indeed so rich, that we might accept the film for the true escapism it offers us.But to deny a consistence would also diminish its merit, Bunuel never conceded surrealistic aesthetics for nonsense, surrealism is a way to transcend the reality by sweeping off every convention but within its own illogic, "Un Chien Andalou" has a consistence on its own, which might explain the film's positive reception that surprised Bunuel and shocked Dali.
Bunuel was said to have carried some stones in his pockets just in case, but he was really underestimating his talent if he thought his films would only shock, he probably forgot that he was influenced by a poet and a man of images.And "Un Chien Andalou" carries these two characteristics, a unique style and harmony and a sense of poetry that makes any quest for a meaning useless, except if we let ourselves transported by this incomprehensible succession of subversives images.
"Un chien andalou" has no story or any kind of clear message, it contains no real characters or even a context for the things that are happening.The movie was made by the surrealist artist Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel and if you know anything about painters that first name should give you a good indicator that your in for a unique experience.Have I gotten anything out of seeing it?
It was called "Un Chien Andalou", and it shocked the world.Buñuel and Dalí wanted to prove that cinema shouldn't be reserved only to attract and please the masses, but that it should also displease them and portray images that are emotionally close to the author and dream-like in sequence.
In cinema giant's Luis Bunuel first scene of his first film we are given immediate indication of what a powerful effect this man will have on the art form for the next eighty years.
What if we made a film with this as a starting point?It's from this conversation between Bunuel and Dali that the genesis of "un Chien Andalou" (1929) was created.
An absence of story, only a sequel of mostly outlandish and vaguely eerie images, no logical link between them.However, "un Chien Andalou" like surrealism derives a part of its influence from Freud's theses who contended that orgasm was a sort of small death and that explains why Bunuel shows to the audience a close-up of Pierre Batcheff with a head's corpse.
If you were wondering if David Lynch was the first talented director to try to shock, repulse and offend his audience,for no better reason than because it is fun to do so...the answer is no.Luis Bunuel, with the help of Salvadore Dali created a movie which, although only 15 minutes long, manages to : 1.
4.  A beautiful young woman stands in the middle of a street while traffic goes by...there are several close calls before one car actually does run her over."Un Chien Andalou" is considered Surrealist, but this is due to the fact that Dali, the great Surrealist painter was co-directorand that the film has no plot.
Un Chien Andalou (1929) is Luis Bunuel's eye popping (or, "eye slicing") and surrealistic short film that he co-wrote with the infamous surrealist artist Salvador Dali.
Luis Buñuel's short film, "Un Chien Andalou" is basically a series of surreal and shocking images, set to a great musical score, that don't appear to have any meaning or even any relevance to each other.
However I can freely admit to this because for me the value was not really in following the plot and understanding (although reading about it in the book before watching was a good idea I think).What value I got from the film was more to do with seeing Dali's imagery come alive on the screen because for the vast majority of the running time it is like being inside one of his paintings  and it is a dizzying and quite unsettling experience albeit a very worthwhile and enjoyable one.
They decide the best way to accomplish this is to give the film no plot, no story, no definite characters, fill it with shock imagery, and hope the weirdness makes people think it's a work of art.That's this movie in a nutshell...
Un Chien Andalou is a solid surreal film that should be watched to see how Dali can play with our minds.
Un Chien Andalou-which Bunuel and his then best friend Salvador Dali first showed to the world in 1929-begins with a close-up of a razor slicing open the eyeball of an actress.
Luis Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou (meaning An Andulasian Dog) is a movie with really no particular plot, in which all it is is just surrealist images such as the famous eye slitting scene, or the horse being dragged on top of a piano.