Un Chien Andalou | Monday Movie Review

Un Chien Andalou
Luis Bunuel
(1929)

IMBD PLOT:Un Chien Andalou consists of bizarre and surreal images that may or may not mean anything.

Requested by @zaffi I finally got around to watching Un Chien Andalou again. This is a film that has the chance of changing who you are as a filmmaker. Not necessarily in a good or even bad way but in understanding of a new way to think about film as art in the surrealism genre.

A masterpiece of true ‘silent’ story telling through images Un Chien deserves credit for simply being attempted to be made and successfully being completed at this point in film history. Even Luis Bunuel, the director, was very afraid this film would not sit well with audiences and cause an outrange due to confusion.

What many think might be a film based on a dream actually feels more like real life. Although Luis told Salvador Dali about dreams he had in relation to this film it comes to life for me more than that. It’s pure surrealism, and this genre done well is hard to find!

This silent had the power to display senses in many raw forms. Images of happiness mix with sadness and/or desire at a whim. Death seems to be something completely different that we understand it, as well as sex. Most of the films in the category contain sexual images at what seem like strange times. It almost seems a requirement to be considered surrealist, but I think Luis has a deeper meaning of the emotions that people feel when they see things happen in life.

What make this surreal is that the characters react in an unexpected way. I don’t think our mind works conveniently in the way a movie plays out frame by frame. Our brain restructures our random thoughts for us. Sometimes when we think other thoughts just cut in and interrupt . Surrealism is a way to express this way of mind order processing. What we see in Un Chien Andalou still relates, just in an abnormal string of images and events.

State of the art special effects such as ants coming out of a hole in someones hand, and eyes being sliced open are amazing to watch for 1929. The film has some proper use of angles even at this early stage of understanding emotions through angles. High and low points of view create shapes like this circle in the picture below. I’ve always been appreciative of shape theory in story telling. It lets objects tell a part of the story.

I especially liked the ending. It’s interesting to me that it’s as if two options for an ending are given and you can choose which one you like better.

With that said, if you want to appreciate filmmaking in a raw form and see how a story is told using authentic surrealism genre rules then anything by Bunuel is a must.

I found both parts of this 17 minute film on YouTube and added them here for you to watch.