Un Chien Andalou

"...anyone halfway interested in the cinema sees it sooner or later, usually several times.."

Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that sentence about Un Chien Andalou in his article dated April 16, 2000. It is an absolutely valid statement, for the movie has remained the most famous short movie ever made since 1929 and has continuously been discussed and analyzed about, although its makers, Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali had always laughed at those interpretations, saying that nothing about the movie, including its title, had intended to make sense. Yes, you cannot have a definitive comment on the movie, and yet, it is also extremely open to infinite number of speculations and explanations, which would all be more or less true in a sense. It is probably because the movie world has made us accustommed to interpret every single thing about a film, that we, the audience, the critics etc. try to put it within a box of explanation.

Un Chien Andalou is Bunuel's first film. Around 1929, it was a time for highly surrealist movement in Paris and young and passionate Bunuel who is absorbed in dreams collaborated with equally absorbed and passionate Dali. It is said that Bunuel had told Dali about his dream in which a cloud sliced the moon in half, like a razor blade slicing through an eye. Dali went on to tell his own dream about a hand crawling with ants, and there they decided to turn these images to a film, borrowing the budget from Bunuel's mother.


The film is a flow of tenuously related scenes, including some that would seem gross to some viewers, especially within the first minute, where one eye of a woman is sliced in two, just as Bunuel's description of his dream. The two clearly intended to shock the audience, probably to bring them to the right state of mind to view the rest of it. The critic Ado Kyrou stated that "For the first time in the history of cinema, a director tries not to please but rather to alienate nearly all potential spectators". Bunuel and Dali took some stones with them before the first viewing, in order to throw, had the audience attacked them upon seeing the film. However, it became surprisingly popular, despite the French's rather negative opinion on surrealist cinema at that time, and despite the rumours that two women even had miscarriage while watching. Today, it is not so shocking for us, the eyes of the viewers who are used to every single technique of scenes like those, thus it is quite possible to say that the surrealist revolutionists have succeeded in their fight.

From Freudian psychoanalysis to 21st century technical aspects, many have had their own interpretations; so here is the movie, for your own analysis: