'Un chien andolou' by Michelle

The surreal nature of Un chien andalou means that the viewer must watch it with an open mind, or perhaps comprehend the dream logic that it is presented in, attempting to shock the audience with its static cuts of seemingly related yet unrelated scenes.

The short realist film released in 1929 by Bunuel and Dali is one of the best-known films of the avant-garde movement of the 1920s. It is difficult to understand the popularity of this bizarre piece, as there is neither narrative to follow nor any form of obvious plot. The film opens with the controversial scene in which a man sharpens a barber knife and slices the eye of a calm and composed woman. It then progresses eight years into the future, involving a young man riding a bicycle, cross-dressed as a nun, to an apartment occupied by the eagerly awaiting woman from the first scene, both eyes intact. This man is possibly the lover of the married woman. This precedes another series of illogical sequences involving a severed hand in the street, attempted rape and apparently a domestic disturbance involving the use of a piano with several items, including two men, attached to it. Furthermore, these scenes are all backed by a displaced fairground like soundtrack, which adds to the surreal experience of the whole film. The closing sequence of the film is as irrational as the rest, involving the two lovers strolling on the beach hand in hand, and then their untimely and unexplained deaths.


This film must be watched with no expectation of coherent narrative or plot to be appreciated, something that is incredibly difficult to do. To value the film, one must look on it like looking on another person’s dream and their inner most psyche.