Day 320: ‘Salvador Dali & Luis Bunuel’s Silent Collaboration’ 2018

Day 320
Wednesday 16 May 2018  2.11am
‘Salvador Dali & Luis Bunuel’s Silent Collaboration’  2018

Un chien andalou  (1928)

Top 100 Films Ever Made –
This film is equal #93 in the 2012 BFI Critics Poll and #91 in the Directors Poll.

This was a film that I wasn’t going to watch again because I know it so well. Or so I thought. Even though I have seen this film several times it is only the most famous shots that make me feel I know it well but I’ve forgotten how outrageous and exciting this 16-minute pearl actually is. It has many others shots and scenes that are equally notable and groundbreaking, crazy and inventive. It plays with comedy, sex and horror themes, editing techniques and special effects, and the sequential revelation of unrelated and related ideas – a kind of planned stream-of-conscious. Everyone probably remembers the razor and the woman’s eye and the ants crawling out of a hole in a man’s hand but there’s so much more to enjoy and consider. It’s less tha ntwenty-minute long and it’s not a hard film to watch. In fact, like a Guinness, it’s worth trying twice.

“Even without the famous shock of the sliced eye, Luis Bunuel’s and Salvador Dali’s short silent film has the hallucinatory and incendiary effect they sought. Some of the images have great poetic force, and at times they have an erotic humour that one has difficulty explaining, even to oneself.”

– Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies, 1982