Un Chien Andalou

3 ratings since posting on Thursday, March 24, 2005
Un Chien Andalou
in Everywhere
website
(submitted by albertoforero.com )

Overall Rating

*****

based on 3 ratings
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Unsu...
 
*****
aww the silence of vision
is under looked.

the slice

of forgeting

it is taken away

at least we

we use our eyes to make truth.
- Unsubscribed , posted 03/31/05
albe...
albertoforero.com
offline 103
*****
Surrealist Film Classic online!!
Many people have written to me and asked where I found my icon, the woman's face - the answer is Un Chien Andalou, a 1929 film by Luis Bu?uel and Salvador Dali. Now you, too, can watch it at Ubuweb







UbuWeb : Film


Un Chien andalou

Format: MPEG
Size: 156mb

Un Chien andalou
France 1929 / Dir Luis Bu?uel, Salvador Dali
Black and white. 17 mins.
Starring Lee Miller, Pierre Batcheff, Simone Mareuil, Luis Bu?uel,


Un Chien andalou (1929)
A review by Damian Cannon, UK 1997

Acclaimed as a surrealist masterpiece, Un Chien andalou aggressively disconnects itself from narrative flow. The creators of this short film. Luis Bu?uel and Salvador Dal?, fully intended there to be no links between successive scenes. Fortunately this didn't inhibit their dreaming up of some of the most striking moments ever to be projected upon the silver screen. The opening focuses on a man (Luis Bu?uel) stropping his cut-throat razor, honing it to a perfect edge. Stepping onto the balcony, he gazes at the moon. This celestial orb is instantly replaced with a woman and, enlarging rapidly, her left eye. The bare blade then descends on her unprotected pupil, a graphic incident.

Designed to shock, which it still does almost 70 years later, quick editing removes the image before it has time to fully sink in. Suddenly the viewer is faced with a nun-like figure weaving uncertainly down the road on a bicycle. There is no bridge to the previous horror, although this mysterious person does provide a number of objects which resurface at odd intervals. Later there is the unusual sight of a man (Robert Hommet) hauling two grand pianos, each stuffed with the putrefying remains of a donkey, as he trudges towards a cowering woman (Simone Mareuil). He is also unfortunate enough to have a hole in his hand, where the ants live. None of this is significant.

A marvellous aspect of something as wilfully bizarre as Un Chien andalou is that almost any interpretation can be drawn from the images shown. Perhaps every single scene is random and unconcerned with any other, although Bu?uel certainly seems to have included items which are present throughout the film. In some ways the repeated glimpses of these things in situations where they shouldn't be adds to the confused feel, enhanced by the off-putting and nonsensical time-markers deployed.

The eternal themes of life, death, lust and love are thrown up at various points, although there is no framework on which to attach these emotions. This is of no consequence though as Bu?uel has already hurried onto the next sequence, violently cutting so that the desired woman becomes naked in a flash - a picture of what are ardent suitor really sees. Un Chien andalou does not require such deep analysis though, being much more a film which should be purely experienced. It achieves that which Bu?uel and Dal? aimed for and, with a live music accompaniment, is unstoppable. - albertoforero.com , posted 03/24/05

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