Un Chien Andalou (1929)

Luis Buñuel directed 34 films and made surrealism fun! People consider his film style and concepts groundbreaking and inspirational. He made Belle de Jour and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, which I really like. I watched Un Chien Andalou today. I’m not sure how much absinthe he and Salvador Dali did, but they clearly saw things others don’t. Often that characteristic makes art that transcends time. In this case, it made an incomprehensible combination of odd images that combined to make fifteen minutes I’ll never get back. Ants crawl out of the hole in a man’s hand. A beautiful, androgynous woman in the street pokes a severed hand with a stick. A man watches as the woman, who has put the hand in a locked box around her neck, stands still as cars whiz by her. The last car has better aim and runs her over. That makes him want to fondle the breasts of the woman next to him who takes issue with that and tries to evade him. After a while he begins to drag two grand pianos each filled with half a dead horse across the room. Soon pilgrims appear. It goes on from there. I have no idea what the film symbolized or if it symbolized anything other than Buñuel’s desire to film some weird ass stuff. The sequence everyone knows with the razor and the eye serves as the jumping off point for one of the strangest films I’ve seen. I’m not exactly sorry I saw it because now I can cross it off my list. That’s about it. Thanks for coming. Please enjoy a hot towel.

I watched this for Cinema Shame project. cinemashame.wordpress.com

This guy.