Un Chien Andalou (1929)
"Un chien andalou" (original title)

In a dream-like sequence, a woman's eye is slit open--juxtaposed with a similarly shaped cloud obsucuring the moon moving in the same direction as the knife through the eye--to grab the ... See full summary »

Director:

Luis Buñuel

Writers:

Salvador Dalí (scenario), Luis Buñuel (scenario)

Stars:

Simone Mareuil, Pierre Batcheff, Luis Buñuel

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Simone Mareuil	...	Young girl (as Simonne Mareuil)
Pierre Batcheff	...	Man (as Pierre Batchef)

Storyline

In a dream-like sequence, a woman's eye is slit open--juxtaposed with a similarly shaped cloud obsucuring the moon moving in the same direction as the knife through the eye--to grab the audience's attention. The French phrase "ants in the palms," (which means that someone is "itching" to kill) is shown literally. A man pulls a piano along with the tablets of the Ten Commandments and a dead donkey towards the woman he's itching to kill. A shot of differently striped objects is repeatedly used to connect scenes.

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Plot Keywords:

ant | piano | donkey | moon | severed hand | 

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Genres:

Short | Fantasy

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

France

Language:

French

Release Date:

6 June 1929 (France)

Also Known As:

Un Chien Andalou

Filming Locations:

Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, France

Company Credits

Technical Specs

Runtime:

16 min

Sound Mix:

Silent

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The movie contains several references to Federico García Lorca (who was in love with Salvador Dalí) and other writers of that time. The rotting donkeys are a reference to the novel "Platero y yo" by Juan Ramón Jiménez, which Luis Buñuel and Dalí hated.

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Goofs

When the young woman with the box is about to be run over by a car, she raises her hands. At that moment she is not holding the box. In the next shot just before the accident she is holding the box again.

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Connections

Spoofed in Wrong Again (1929)

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Soundtracks

"Tristan und Isolde: Liebestod"
(Opera)
Written by Richard Wagner

User Reviews

Holy Eyeball Slicing, Batman!

"Sitting comfortably in a dark room, dazzled by the light and the movement which exert a quasi-hypnotic power... fascinated by the interest of human faces and the rapid changes of place, [a] cultivated individual placidly accepts the most appalling themes...and all this naturally sanctioned by habitual morality, government, and international censorship, religion, dominated by good taste and enlivened by white humor and other prosaic imperatives of reality." - Luis Bunuel

Un Chien Andalou exists to shock the viewer of this stupor that Bunuel elucidates above. Freudian dream imagery, amorphous space/time, and absurdist humor combine in this drawn out mating ritual between a confused cyclist and the female he pursues. May be the most inventive fifteen minutes of film anywhere.