UN CHIEN ANDALOU — CLASSIC FILM PICK

Before their volatile relationship between Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali soured, the two surrealists created cinema's purest example of surrealism . It is a combination of dream and nightmare from an actively surreal perspective.

The 17-minute film started riots when it premiered in Paris in 1929. Buñuel carried rocks in his pockets to throw at his attackers. Famous for a scene of the slitting of a woman's eye with a straight-razor, the film remains in heavy rotation in America's college classes where it's shown in a variety of academic contexts.

There is a circus sideshow quality in the way Buñuel and Dali gloat over their strange images, like a swarm of ants erupting from a hole in the middle of a man's hand. With irreverent abandon the maverick artists provoke the audience with a movie that celebrates film's adaptive ability to expose the sub-conscious mind. "Un Chien Andalou is 17-minutes of sheer genius."

 

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