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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Connections

Referenced in Dreaming with Scissors: Hitchcock, Surrealism & Salvador Dali (2008)

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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

Weird, Interesting, & Memorable

Even those who do not like Buñuel's "Un Chien Andalou" will probably never forget it once they see it. It's one of the weirder and more interesting films that you'll ever run across, and even aside from its significance, it would be worth seeing for the distinctive style and material.

It is also very well-crafted, despite its apparently chaotic narrative (or lack thereof). Even when it is impossible to attach meaning to some of the images, it seems clear that it has been filmed almost exactly as Buñuel and Dali intended. Even the music seems to have been chosen deliberately, and at times it complements the images surprisingly well.

While the exact meanings of many of the symbols are probably deliberately obscure, it strongly suggests some general themes such as desire, frustration, and the like. To attempt to analyze it carefully is almost certainly a mistake, and it is probably best taken as a dream or a dream-like series of events without the kinds of obvious connections that one might want to find.

Likewise, it's hard to determine just how good or how important it may be. The extreme disregard of cinema conventions is hard to evaluate now, in that the movie itself established some alternative conventions of a sort. The images themselves are often fascinating, sometimes unsettling or even off-putting, almost always interesting and suggestive.

Perhaps the one thing that can be said about such a movie without much risk of going astray is that almost anyone who has a real interest in cinema or cinema history will (or ought to) want to see "Un Chien Andalou" for himself or herself. Hearing it described by someone else really cannot adequately convey what it is like.