Un Chien Andalou - Kristina T

Using 15 minutes of imagery designed to shock, the film is doing exactly the same as its opening sequence, entering our minds aggressively through the human eye, cutting through the safety of conventional linearity with the blade which Dali and Bunuel sharpened using art and surrealism.

A man’s hand is infested with ants, possibly symbolizing an itching to kill, restlessness, or even a sexual awakening. An androgynous woman pokes at a severed hand in the street with her cane. A man drags two pianos, dead animals, and two live priests towards a woman, implying cultural and religious symbolism. There are references to attempted rape and a man’s joy over a woman being run over. All of these sadistic images could interrelate to show Dali’s fascination with the enigma of Hitler, a man who he said was “uniquely capable of turning things completely upside down”.

A woman’s armpit hair attaches itself to a man’s face, and a dying man is later seen clinging to a naked woman. Devoid of meaning or not, these two ideas (especially of the naked woman) are prominent in Dali’s paintings, suggesting he could simply be applying artistic ideas to the complex possibilities of the moving image.

To say that Un Chien Andalou deviates from any narrative flow may be a misunderstood interpretation on our part. “For a story long or short; of past, present, or future; factual or imagined; told for any purpose; and with or without much detail”, Un Chien Andalou still applies to this definition despite its scenes not adhering to any conventional structure or relation to one another. With two main characters and a vague chronology of events, the film still shows some mercy to the majority of viewers unaccustomed to surrealism.

Kristina Tarasova