Bens post on Un Chien Andalou

Un Chien Andalou is a bizarre and almost perversely obscure piece of film in which a sequence of surreal events present a confusing and intentionally plotless narrative.

The film opens with one of the more gruesome and shocking scenes even by today’s standards, let alone that of 1929. A man sharpens a razor blade in the moonlight only to proceed with slicing open a woman’s eye with it while she sits motionlessly. We are then taken through a series of bizarre sequences involving an injured, cross-dressing cyclist, a young lady holding a severed hand only to then be run over, various death sequences and a man with ants crawling from his hands, dragging pianos attached to dead cattle and religious figures across the room. The setting illogically changes at a couple of points in the film. The music used seems, at times, too light hearted to coincide with what we are seeing, adding to the dream-like surrealism.

Though the scenes are strung together with a certain lack of narrative or conventional plot, this makes it seem more of a succession of artistic creations for interpretation from the audience rather than a story to follow.