Un chien andalou
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| Un chien andalou | |
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| Directed by | Luis Buñuel |
| Produced by | Luis Buñuel |
| Written by | Luis Buñuel Salvador Dalí |
| Starring | Pierre Batcheff Simone Mareuil Luis Buñuel Salvador Dalí Jaime Miravilles |
| Cinematography | Albert Duverger Jimmy Berliet |
| Editing by | Luis Buñuel |
| Release date(s) |  June 26, 1929 |
| Running time | 16 min. |
| Country | France |
| Language | Silent |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog) is a sixteen-minute surrealist film made in France in 1929, by writer/director Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. It is one of the best-known surrealist films of the French avant-garde film movement of the 1920s. It stars Simone Mareuil and Pierre Batcheff as the unnamed protagonists.
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[edit] Synopsis
The film has no "plot", in the normal sense of the word. Its structure is nonlinear. It uses dream logic that can be described in terms of Freudian free association. The film is a series of apparently unrelated, and at times potentially offensive, scenes that attempt to shock the viewer. It also features surprising camera angles and other film tricks.
The film opens with a scene in which a woman's eye (actually a close-up of a calf's eye) is slit by a razor. The man with the razor is played by Buñuel himself. Subsequent scenes have less explicit violence:
- an androgynous blind woman pokes at a severed hand in the street with her cane
- a man drags two grand pianos containing dead and rotting donkeys, the tablets of the Ten Commandments, and two live priests (Dalí plays one of the priests in this scene)
- a man's hand has a hole in the palm from which ants emerge. The French phrase "ants in the palms," (which means that someone is "itching" to kill) is shown literally.
- a woman's armpit hair attaches itself to a man's face.
There are two central characters, a man and a woman, who appear in both scenes, but they are unnamed. The chronology of the film is disjointed; jumping from "once upon a time" to "eight years later," etc.
[edit] Analysis
American film critic Roger Ebert called Un chien andalou "the most famous short film ever made, and anyone halfway interested in the cinema sees it sooner or later, usually several times."[1]
Critics have suggested that Un chien andalou can be understood as a typically Buñuelian anti-bourgeois, anticlerical piece. The man dragging a piano, donkey and priests has been interpreted as an allegory of man's progress towards his goal being hindered by the baggage of society's conventions that he is forced to bear. Likewise, the image of an eyeball being sliced by a razor can be understood as Buñuel "attacking" the film's viewers. Also, Federico García Lorca viewed this film as a personal attack on him.
In spite of these varying interpretations, Buñuel makes clear through his writings, that between Dalí and himself, the only rule for the writing of the script was that "no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted." [2]
Some scholars argue that Un chien andalou might be the genesis of the filmmaking style present in the modern music video. Others say it is among the first low budget independent films.
[edit] Behind the scenes
- One of the directors has explained that the eyeball being sliced is a cow's eye which was placed into an open socket of an actress missing her original eye. (Ref. Buñuel, 1968); a close inspection of the shot makes it clear that it is in fact a cow's eye in a cow's socket.
- Modern prints of the film feature a soundtrack: excerpts from "Liebestod", from Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and two Argentinian tangos. These are the same music that Buñuel played on a phonograph during the original 1929 screening; he first added them to a sound print of the film in 1960. (Ref. Buñuel, 1968)
- Both of the main actors (Batcheff and Mareuil) eventually committed suicide.
[edit] Influence
- Laurel and Hardy's 1929 comedy short, Wrong Again has a scene with a horse on a piano, a possible reference to Un chien andalou's donkeys in pianos.
- The film is heavily referenced in the Pixies' song "Debaser" and in The Eraserheads' song "Andalusian Dog" .
- During his 1976 tour, rock star David Bowie used the film as his opening act.
- Esthero's music video for "Heaven Sent" draws heavily from the film's imagery.
- The 1990s animated series The Critic parodies a scene from the film (the nun on the bike) in an episode.
- The 1991 original Silence of the Lambs's cover case and original movie poster featured a graphic picture of a moth with a skull imprinted on its back. This picture was taken from Un Chien Andalou's scene where the woman is startled while noticing a moth on the doorframe of her apartment. As the camera zooms in one can almost see the exact-same moth.
- The 2002 film The Ring featured scenes from Un chien andalou.
- A 2003 South Korean film Oldboy features the scene in which ants are coming out of vein on the hero's arm. The hero later becomes a killer.
- A 2005 advert for Stella Artois was heavily inspired by the film. The advert's most direct reference is a shot of a cracked egg from which ants emerge — a more television-friendly version of the hand scene in the original.
- The film Birth was heavily influenced by Un chien andalou.[1]
- In 2006 rock/electronic composer Keith Moore created a modern score for the film.
- For Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights in October 2006, the scene where Buñuel slits the woman's eye was shown on the Terror Tram attraction supposedly as the work of director Pavel Pranevsky. Pranevsky was a fictional character created by the theme park who was supposedly wandering the grounds and killing guests as part of his next film. [3] [4] [5]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Roger Ebert. "Un Chien Andalou (1928)". April 16, 2000.
- ^ Buñuel, Luis (1983). My Last Sigh, Abigail Israel (trans), New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-394-52854-9.
- ^ Halloween Horror Nights. New University Online. Retrieved on 2006-11-05.
- ^ UNIVERSAL STUDIOS HOLLYWOOD. Screamscape. Retrieved on 2006-11-05.
- ^ Video of Terror Tram Ride. YouTube. Retrieved on 2006-11-05.
[edit] References
- Buñuel, Luis, Salvador Dalí (1968). Classic Film Scripts: L'Age d'Or and Un Chien Andalou, Marianne Alexandre (trans), Letchworth: Lorrimer. ISBN 0-85647-079-1.
