Un Chien Andalou (DVD)

Nothing in 'Un Chien Andalou' makes any sense, the title ("an Andalusian dog") included. This is true because its creators, Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, said so. No 'hidden meanings', only personal interpretations. However there's no shame in trying to understand it because it's cool to be contrary. It was made in the hope of administering a revolutionary shock to society. Today, its techniques have been so thoroughly absorbed even in the mainstream that its shock value is diluted. The eyeball-slicing scene will always be disturbing, but it's so famous that today it gets more "ooohs" of recognition than ...  Read the complete review

The writers of the film wanted Un Chien Andalou to work against the traditions of mainstream cinema, and to challenge the viewer's perceptions of reality. Both Buñuel and Dalí were interested in psychoanalysis and notions of the unconscious mind, with Un Chien Andalou they were attempting "...to disrupt the mental anxiety of the spectator..." (Dali) Although Un Chien Andalou is clearly a bizarre and 'surreal' film, sections of it remain in keeping with the conventions employed in traditional narrative cinema. The lack of narrative, or at least the lack of a coherent narrative, in Un Chien Andalou is reminiscent of the unfolding of a dream. ...  Read the complete review

"Un Chien Andalou" is a completely baffling experience from two master surrealists. Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel collaborated on a film that introduced the world to surrealist filmmaking. Of course avant-garde films were made before these two Spanish nutters came on the scene but Dali and Bunuel served surrealist cinema to a mainstream audience. On release the film caused outrage from the public and critics because it was blasphemous, violent and contained nudity. The film was given its world premiere in Paris and it was popular with artists and writers (as witnessed in Philip Kaufman's "Henry and June" when Henry Miller ...  Read the complete review

?A surreal film takes one out of one?s conscious mind into the subconscious. Surrealism effects the emotions through the mind. One sees images and makes certain emotional connections in one?s mind. If the vision revealed is too much for the rational mind to absorb (too intense, too threatening, too real) yet cannot be rejected, then it leaves the consciousness and comes to exist on a sublime level as pure surrealism? It is with this words that Louis Bunuel?s Un Chien Andalu has often been described, he made it in collaboration with Salvador Dali in 1928. In order to better understand the film and the reasons for which it became such a landmark ...  Read the complete review

note: also appears in part on The Student Room and Flixster Un Chien Andalou is a masterwork of abstract cinema, made in 1928 by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali. The film is a rare unpretentious part of abstract cinema - it doesn't have any sort of loftier ideals - it was simply composed as a cinematic experiment to see what sort of interpretations people would themselves bring to the table. It also subverted the common film form at the time with tricky jump-cutting and a seemingly incomprehensible narrative that has inspired artists such as David Lynch without a doubt. Bunuel and Dali wrestled constantly over what to put into the film, but there is ...  Read the complete review