Un Chien Andalou

(, An Andalusian Dog) is a 1929 French silent short film directed, produced and edited by Luis Buñuel, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Salvador Dalí. Buñuel's first film, it was initially released in a limited capacity at Studio des Ursulines in Paris, but became popular and ran for eight months.

has no plot in the conventional sense of the word. With disjointed chronology, jumping from the initial "once upon a time" to "eight years later" without events or characters changing, it uses dream logic in narrative flow that can be described in terms of the then-popular Freudian free association, presenting a series of tenuously related scenes. is a seminal work of surrealist cinema.

Synopsis

thumb|thumbtime=6|The full short film (24 )

A man sharpens a razor and tests it on his thumb. He gazes at the moon, which is about to be bisected by a thin cloud. A young woman stares straight ahead as he brings the razor near her eye. A cut occurs to the cloud passing in front of the moon, and then to a close-up of the razor slicing open her eye. The two decided to write a script based on the concept of repressed emotions.

In deliberate contrast to the approach taken by Jean Epstein and his peers, which was to never leave anything in their work to chance, with every aesthetic decision having a rational explanation and fitting clearly into the whole, Buñuel made clear throughout his writings that, between Dalí and himself, the only rule for the writing of the script was: "No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted." He also stated: "Nothing, in the film, symbolizes anything. The only method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis."

In his 1939 autobiography, Buñuel stated: "In the film the aesthetics of Surrealism are combined to some of Freud's discoveries. The film was totally in keeping with the basic principle of the school, which defined Surrealism as 'Psychic Automatism', unconscious, capable of returning to the mind its true functions, beyond any form of control by reason, morality or aesthetics."

Filming

The film, which was financed by Buñuel's mother, was shot in Le Havre and at the Billancourt Studios in Paris over a 10-day period in March 1928. It is a black-and-white silent production shot on 35 mm film, with a running time of 17 minutes (though some sources state 24 minutes) and a physical length of 430 meters.

For many years, reports on the film's notorious eyeball-slicing scene were conflicted over the eye of which dead animal Buñuel had used; sources variously claimed goat, sheep, or donkey. Buñuel later confirmed it was from a calf. Through the use of intense lighting and bleaching of the calf's skin, he attempted to make the dead animal's furry face look more like human skin.

The woman who is seated on a chair and reading during the bicycle scene throws her book aside when she notices the fallen man, revealing that the book contains a reproduction of a painting by Johannes Vermeer, whom Dalí greatly admired and often referenced in his work.

In Buñuel's original script, the final shot was to feature the corpses of the man and woman "consumed by swarms of flies". Due to budget limitations, the film instead ended with a still shot of the man and woman half-buried in the sand.

The film contains several thematic references to Federico García Lorca and other writers of that time. The rotting donkeys are a reference to the popular children's novel Platero y yo by Juan Ramón Jiménez, which Buñuel and Dalí both hated.

French filmmaker and anthropologist Jean Rouch reported that Buñuel and Dalí ran out of money after filming was completed, forcing Buñuel to edit the film personally in his kitchen without the aid of any technical equipment.

Reception

The first screening of took place at Studio des Ursulines. Notable attendees of the première included Pablo Picasso, Le Corbusier, Jean Cocteau, Christian Bérard and Georges Auric, in addition to the entirety of André Breton's Surrealist group. The audience's positive reception of the film amazed Buñuel, who was relieved that no violence ensued. Dalí, on the contrary, was reportedly disappointed, feeling that the audience's reaction made the evening "less exciting". Buñuel later claimed that prior to the show, he had put stones in his pockets "to throw at the audience in case of disaster."

Buñuel intended to shock and insult the intellectual bourgeoisie of his youth, later saying: "Historically, this film represents a violent reaction against what at that time was called 'avantgarde cine,' which was directed exclusively to the artistic sensibility and to the reason of the spectator." Against his hopes and expectations, the film was a huge success amongst the French elite, leading Buñuel to remark: "What can I do about the people who adore all that is new, even when it goes against their deepest convictions, or about the insincere, corrupt press, and the inane herd that saw beauty or poetry in something which was basically no more than a desperate impassioned call for murder?"

After its "triumphant premiere", was bought by the owner of "Studio-28". During its eight-month run, forty or fifty informers came to the police with a demand to ban it. This was the beginning of years of insults and threats that haunted Buñuel until his old age. A likely apocryphal account claimed that two miscarriages occurred while watching the film. Despite the criticism, however, the film was never banned.

Through their accomplishment with , Dalí and Buñuel became the first filmmakers to be officially welcomed into the ranks of the Surrealists by the movement's leader André Breton, an event recalled by film historian Georges Sadoul: "Breton had convoked the creators to our usual venue [the Café Radio] ... one summer's evening. Dalí had the large eyes, grace, and timidity of a gazelle. To us, Buñuel, big and athletic, his black eyes protruding a little, seemed exactly like he always is in , meticulously honing the razor that will slice the open eye in two."

Sequel

Among the most enthusiastic viewers of the film were the wealthy couple Viscount Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles, who commissioned Dalí and Buñuel to create a sequel, of around the same length, with sound, to be called La Bête Andalouse, in order to affirm its connection with Un Chien. Dalí stated that the theme of the new film was to parallel that of the first: "to present the straight and pure 'conduct' of someone who continues to pursue love despite wretched humanitarian ideals, patriotism and the other poor mechanisms of reality." This new film ultimately was released in 1930 under the title L'Age d'Or.

The sequel was not a success with Parisian high society. First shown in November 1930, it was received extremely coldly. The next day, Charles de Noailles learned that he had been expelled from the Jockey Club de Paris. The de Noailles family quickly withdrew the film after it was banned by the Prefecture of Police of Paris.

Soundtrack

During the original 1929 screening in Paris, Buñuel selected music which he played live on a gramophone. Modern prints of the film feature a soundtrack consisting of excerpts from Richard Wagner's "Liebestod" from his opera Tristan und Isolde and a recording of two Argentinian tangos, "Tango Argentino" and "Recuerdos" by the Vicente Alvarez & Carlos Otero et son orchestre. They were first added to a print of the film in 1960 under Buñuel's supervision.

Influence

Film scholar Ken Dancyger has argued that might be the genesis of the filmmaking style present in the modern music video. Roger Ebert called it an inspiration for low-budget independent films. Premiere ranked the opening scene at number ten on its list of "The 25 Most Shocking Moments in Movie History".

The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited as one of his favorite films.

The film was shown before every concert of David Bowie's Isolar – 1976 Tour.

The lyrics of the Pixies' song "Debaser" are largely based on references to the film.

Notes

References

External links

Un perro andaluz. The film, online at RTVE.
Un Chien Andalou analyzed by Michael Koller
Un Chien Andalou, from Shatter, Rupture, Break one of the Art Institute of Chicago's digital scholarly catalogues