Un Chien Andalou (1929)

Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí present 17 minutes of bizarre, surreal imagery.

Director:

Luis Buñuel (as Louis Bunuel)

Writers:

Salvador Dalí (scenario) (as Salvador Dali), Luis Buñuel (scenario) (as Louis Bunuel)

Stars:

Pierre Batcheff, Simone Mareuil, Luis Buñuel

Cast

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

Storyline

In a surrealistic film with input from Salvador Dalí, director Luis Buñuel presents stark, surrealistic images including the slitting open of a woman's eye and a dead horse being pulled along on top of a piano. A mysterious film open to interpretations ranging from deep to completely meaningless, this short (17-minute) film certainly presented something new in the cinema of its day.

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Plot Keywords:

surrealism | piano | donkey | grand piano | breast fondling | 

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Genres:

Short | Fantasy | Horror

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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

Legend has it that the severed hand used in the street scene was a real hand, and Dali convinced a man to cut it off in exchange for enough money to buy lunch.

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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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Alternate Versions

In 1983, a new version of the film was produced in Switzerland. Very slightly edited, this version contained a completely new soundtrack with music composed for the film by Mauricio Kagel.

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Connections

Featured in Der Ausdruck der Hände (1997)

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Soundtracks

Prelude Tristan und Isolde
Written by Richard Wagner
Performed on the BBC radio service
Alfred Hitchcock's 1930 film "Murder!", inspired by the soundtrack from Un Chien Andalou?

User Reviews

For those who like their Surrealism straight, no water-back.

Probably the greatest short film in existence, and one of the most influential films ever. Preferable, in my view, to the longer follow-up *L'Age d'Or*, if only because *Un Chien Andalou* wastes no time trying to construct an even peripheral narrative. Just seventeen minutes of masterly, bizarre images and dream-logic. There's something gratifying in the fact that, in Bunuel's first film, Bunuel himself is practically the first thing we see. After he cuts open a woman's eyeball with a straight razor, we see him no more. A fine introduction.

The famous Slitting of the Eyeball constitutes Bunuel's clarion call for cinema to ATTACK the audience right at the organ with which it consumes the medium. From that point on, he never looked back during the next five decades of movie-making. You'll notice I've waited this long to mention his putative collaborator on *Un Chien Andalou*, Salvador Dali. That's because dragging him along is wearisome, and frankly, not even germane. This movie is strictly Bunuel's baby, and I don't care what the credits say: we get the guns, bugs, rotting carcasses, sexual fetishism, and idiotic clergymen that featured in almost every Bunuel film that followed this one. I'm not sure which part of the movie constituted Dali's dreams . . . but from where I'm sitting, *Andalou* strikes me as wholly Bunuelian.

It's also not as sloppy as some critics have made out. The images may be as disconnected as in any dream, but the logic behind them is rooted in the aesthetic philosophies of the great Surrealists like Artaud, Cocteau, and the rest of 'em. Don't kid yourself into believing that Bunuel was a lazy hack with a camera, the directorial equivalent of a homely poet scribbling free verse at your local Starbucks. He knew exactly what he was doing, and in this film, made each of those seventeen minutes count. There is a ruthless economy actuating all that kinky whimsy.

A landmark achievement that prodded the medium forward even as it announced the zenith of the Surrealist movement. 10 stars out of 10.