An Andalusian Dog

This short silent film is (in)famous for a gutchurningly realistic image of a woman's eyeball being sliced open by a razor. It comes near the beginning of the film as a way of getting the viewer's attention, and the film holds this attention for the remainder of its 16 minutes despite the apparent absence of any real plot or characters. Spanish director Luis Bunuel (in his directorial debut) collaborated with famed artist Salvador Dali for this piece, and the two create a delightfully surrealistic series of scenes that act as a cinematic counterpart to certain techniques being pioneered in modernist literature during the 1920s. More specifically, it's a dreamlike sense of free association that sees the film tumble across unconnected scenes like a stream of consciousness.

It's actually quite accessible to modern viewers as it plays like the world's first MTV music video, and the way An Andalusian Dog fluidly segues from, say, an apartment to a beach feels like the precursor to pop music videos that would be created some 50-60 years later. It's a very strange experience, dissolving into new and unpredictable images and gleefully revelling in sex and violence to establish a riveting and distinctly visual tableux. One particular aspect that sheds some light on what the film might be trying to say (though this is really anybody's guess) is the predominance of body horror - the eye scene, a shot of ants crawling from a wound in a man's palm, a disembodied hand, etc. What it's supposed to be about isn't really all that important though, the emphasis is on using the developing scope of cinema in a new and artistically original way.

DIRECTOR: Luis Bunuel
WRITER/SOURCE: Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali
KEY ACTORS: Pierre Batcheff, Simone Mareuil, Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali

RELATED TEXTS
- Bunuel followed up his debut with a longer surrealist film, The Age of Gold, in 1930. Some of his later surrealist films are The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Phantom of Liberty.
- Other famous surrealist films: The Smiling Madame Beudet, The Seashell and the Clergyman, Rose Hobart, El Topo, The Holy Mountain, Eraserhead and Videodrome.