Customer Reviews

Un Chien Andalou [VHS]

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The Facets DVD of Un Chien Andalou is a disgrace. The frame was severly cropped at the top (some scenes feature actors lopped off at their foreheads). Contrast was boosted to the point where significant detail is lost. As if this weren't enough, there is a wide unsightly glitch running horizontally across the screen that lasts for 5 or so frames. Despite the interviews with Bunuel's son which are the only things worth the time here, I would avoid this disc. The film itself I think is great. It's a shame that a staple of art cinema has been handled so poorly for DVD.

The film is most easily viewed when you take each scene as being essentially a work unto itself. However, there is a point to the film . It is about a man's struggles with sexual and religious repression and his quest to rid himself of both by killing. The ant in the hand symbolizes a french expression for murder. dragging the preist around deals with his religious hang ups and his fantasies of the girl have very obvious overtones of sexual repression. As for the eyeball slicing ......Dali liked to use the distorion (or in this case) destruction of an image of an eyeball to signal the warped ,surrealist, dimension he dealt with and Bunuel merely adopted this idea.

The video is geometrically distorted, interlaced, has blown out contrast, almost no detail at all, and horrible sound. TransFlux Films should be ashamed for putting out such poor quality work, yet including a featurette on the cover designer.

Everyone should avoid this DVD and go for the BFI double feature with L'Age D'Or, which has a watchable Un chein andalou for a change.

Luis Bunuel made his directorial debut with 1929's "Un Chien Andalou" -- a 17 minute short film. The film was made in collaboration with the great surrealistic artist, Salvador Dali; this pairing was repeated for the 1930 masterpiece "L'Age D'Or." Viewing the first tentative steps of two giants is obviously fascinating, which is enough to recommend "Un Chien Andalou."

As with other great surrealistic films, the plot, such as it is, does not make any sense. Of course, themes can be derived from the work, although surrealism essentially is meant to be non-thematic. Some of the images from "Un Chien Andalou" are shocking and justifiably famous -- most notably a scene depicting a straight razor slicing into a woman's eyeball. Yes, these scenes are somewhat disgusting but also amazing for a film over 75 years old.

The film has not been updated or cleaned up at all, so the DVD image is somewhat murky. Bunuel added a music track in 1960 to what was originally a silent film; the score works beautifully. The DVD extras include an interview with Bunuel's son in which he discusses "Un Chien Andalou" as well as his father's rather tumultuous relationship with Dali. An audio commentary by Spanish surrealism expert Stephen Barber is also included; unfortunately, this track is pretty much unlistenable as Barber drones on about the history of surrealism in a deadly dull manner. Skip the audio commentary and just enjoy Bunuel's work as is.

WOW! Where do I start with this one? Here is an absolutely brilliantly realized film that doesn't even try to follow a coherent plot. It's the most insane film I've ever seen, and I loved every second of it. It's tough not to look past the images for what they are, though, because your mind tries to fill in the blanks and write its own story. Scenes will change their mood suddenly and without reason, creating an utterly shocking experience. I was surprised to see such sophisticated technique in such an unstructured film. Un Chien Andalou is a masterpiece of the absurd, and I strongly suggest anyone with a taste for the weird see it.

Along with the Age of Gold, this is my all time favorite Bunuel films. Wonderfully abstract and artistic. Dali did not actually work on the film, as is commonly thought. He did discuss the work with his friend Luis, and give him ideas, although production was purely Bunuel. The pinnacle of the surreal !

This is the Granddaddy of all expermental avant-garde films. It is a must for all film-buffs. And, it will definitly make you say HUH????

If Walter Benjamin once said that "every cultural artifact is also a document of barbarism," Un Chien Andalou is exactly that. With one eye out for scandal and the other looking it all as a joke, Bunuel's first film (with collaboration from Dali) is a concentrated piece of sonambulist nonesense. Patched together by an illogical sequence of events, the movie follows the criteria of a proper Surrealist object--disjunctions in time and space. (It was supposed to be the passport for both artists in to the Parisian Surrealist circle. And what a passport it was. It proved to be a veritable succes de scandal.) But it also contains the seeds for the future work of this auteur. Luis Bunuel went on to have a strange career, working at MoMA at one point, a commercial director in Mexico, and finally an internationally recognized filmmaker. Un Chien Andalou was to be the ground zero for Bunuel. Essential filmviewing.

Un Chien Andalou is a work of Art, BUT the dvd that I got from Amazon was not a of a very good quality. I have seen the film in dvd format several times in the past and this dvd version has way too much contrast and digital glitches in two or three occassions.

Whether you're a film buff or not, Un Chien Andalous (Andalusian Dog) will definitely have an impact on your perspective of cinema. It's not a film for everyone, with disruptions in time and space that will most likely leave you wondering whether you actually saw this film or dreamt it. But once you get through it, you may find it satisfying to have experienced one of history's boldest artistic presentations. Also with a wonderful music score. Hey, if anyone out there knows the name of the tango (or corrida?) in the film's background, please let me know what it is! (Si algien sabe el titulo del tango en esta pelicula, escribame por favor)