Un Chien Andalou

Un Chien Andalou is one of the most, if not the most, famous or infamous surrealist picture of all time, the directorial debut of Luis Bunuel, and the first collaboration between Bunuel and the artist Salvador Dali (although they would subsequently fall out during the production of their next film L’Age D’or after Bunuel tried to strangle Dali’s wife!). It opens with the infamous slicing of the eye (featuring for the only time Bunuel appearing as a character’. It is a juxtaposition of shots, an initial slicing action of the eye, cut away to a cloud ‘slicing the moon’, then back to the eye actually being cut. We are then subjected to a montage of scenes which explores the ideas of rape, anti-bourgeoisies, anti-establishment etc. The contrast between the conscious and the unconscious is prevalent, images of dead horses on pianos, priests being dragged across the floor (exploring Bunuel’s favourite topic, anti-religion), severed hands, and corpses buried in sand follow and remain in the viewer’s mind long after the film (only 15 minutes running time) end. From the outset, we know that this film intends to shock, and challenge our ideologies and beliefs. It wants to change the way we see things, our perspective, our line of sight to subject to chan


Bunuel’s associative montage raises a philosophical query ‘Is it more dreadful than the spectacle of a cloud veiling a full moon’.


I found this nice quote from Alfred Hitchcock, ‘If I am the Master of Suspense, then Bunuel is the Master of us all’. And Jean Vigo hailed Un Chien Andalou for its ‘social consciousness’.