Un Chien Andalou (1928) (Not Rated)

Un Chien Andalou (1928) (Not Rated)

Directed by Luis Buñuel

Starring: Pierre Batcheff, Simone Mareuil, Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí

Daddy Says:

Wow. Just wow.

This may be the first film review I've written that will take you longer to read than it would take you to actually watch the film being reviewed. Un Chien Andalou is a short film, only about sixteen minutes long. You may have heard of it, but unless you're a serious student of film (or amateur film critic like me) you've probably never seen it. If the picture to the left doesn't register in your memory, you've definitely never seen it. If you had, that image will never leave your memory again.

Un Chien Andalou is directed by Luis Buñuel, and was conceived by he and the famous artist Salvador Dali (the guy who painted the melting clocks). Their goal was to shock, and possibly offend, their audiences by creating images which had no rational explanations. In fact, that was their only criteria for inclusion: If it could be explained, it didn't go in.

What we get are images of startling power, even today 82 years after the movie was made. The movie opens with a straight razor being sharpened. The hands run the blade along the back of his thumbnail to test its sharpness. My own thumb started hurting in sympathy while watching. The man with the razor looks out the window at the full moon. A woman sits in front of a dressing table mirror. The man comes up behind her and opens her left eye as seen in the picture above. A quick cut to the moon being divided horizontally by a thin layer of clouds is followed by... me watching my daughter cover her eyes and exclaiming "oh my gosh, why are you making me watch this?".

Almost in entirety, the various scenes in the film have no connection to each other. Yet our minds persist in trying to make sense of the proceedings. We see a woman look out an upstairs window, then the film cuts to an overhead shot of something happening on the street below. But is it really what the woman sees? The normal rules of editing film would say that it is. But here the rules don't apply. When the film was being made, the actress wasn't told what she was looking at, so why should the answer be that easy.

Un Chien Andalou is a remarkable short film. Were it not for this movie, there would be no David Lynch, no Matrix, no Inception. It's a dream made real through the power of film.

Rating for Un Chien Andalou: *****.

Daughter Says:

This movie was sixteen minutes of torture. I couldn’t watch half of it because it was so gross. Who in the world thought it’d be funny to slice up an eyeball, animal or human? I’m starting to think Luis Bunuel (the director) is insane and so is my dad for thinking this was a good movie.

None of the movie made much sense. I felt like Bunuel was just trying to see how many people he could torture for sixteen minutes. Well, guess what dude! You did it! It was disgusting, creepy, and down right wrong. There was nothing going good for this movie. It started out with my three least favorite things I hate to see in a movie: silence, subtitles, and black and white. Then I saw the eyeball and I just couldn’t watch. (This isn’t fun at all.)

Once that part was over I thought I was free from all the gross stuff, or at least how could it get any worse. Oh, was I wrong about that. This film got worse and worse. You know how, in the movies, when someone’s day is just going all wrong and they say well at least it can’t get any worse. Well that happened to me when I watched this film.

I don’t speak much French, let alone be able to read it. I know one word that made me joyful while watching this movie: Fin. All the way through this movie I was hoping for that word to pop up on the screen, but the movie never seemed to end. It just kept going and going and going. This movie was the longest sixteen minutes of my life.

I can’t even start to describe the horrible feeling I felt while watching this movie. I nearly dropped dead when Dad wanted to watch it again, but this time with the commentary. I’m going to have to tell you to stay very (AND I MEAN VERY) far away from this movie. You can’t even really call this movie a movie, because it’s not long enough to be a TV show. But to be honest I’m glad it’s as short as it is. If it was any longer I might have to die.

What kind of name is Un Chien Andalou? There weren’t even any dogs in this film. I think this guy does crack or something.

Rating for Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog): zero stars.