A man sharpens a razor and tests it on his thumb. He gazes at the moon, which is about to be bisected by a thin cloud. A young woman stares straight ahead as he brings the razor near her eye. A cut occurs to the cloud passing in front of the moon, and then to a close-up of the razor slicing open her eye.[Note 1][2]
Bunuel and Dali went through some shit. They were a part of Generation of 27 back in Spain and their thing was stirring the shit. Spanish society was very prude and button up so the crew was focused on trolling the living fuck out of that. That had a lot of pushback from spanish authorities.
Bunuel came from religious upbringing and he had a problem with religion and wasn’t shy to a point about it (long story short - the worst thing about is the hypocrisy and other sick shit) and he was very mean and petty about it. And then he ended up in Paris hanging out with cool guys but never in the main event.
Meanwhile Dali came from very controlling and oppressive family (that eventually disowned him) and he was very confused man because of that. But his family supported him so he wasn’t starving in Paris even though his life was deeply unstable and stressful.
Both were quite fed up by the way they weren’t taken seriously by the French so chips on the shoulder were involved.
Bunuel and Dali really liked american slapstick movies and its absurdist storytelling tropes that built upon vaudeville performances and reached beyond that with creative editing and special effects.
At the same time, France had its own booming film industry going crazy and it had very healthy experimental scene. There were dada-adjacent films like Ballet Mechanique, Le Retour à la Raison and Entracte that went off the wall. Abel Gance was well into his blockbuster era. Rene Clair did surrealist comedies. Germaine Dulac, Jean Epstein and Louis Delluc were doing impressionist cinema.
At the same time, the french theater had long-running tradition of grand guignol - it was schlocky, wacky, tacky, full of smoke and mirrors effects and it was gleefully rejecting highbrow theater conventions in favor of cheap thrills. This aspect also fascinated another prominent member of the surrealist crew Antonin Artaud who was gaining momentum in the mid 1920s with his Theatre Alfred Jarry. It was slightly before Artaud formulated his ideas into the Theater of Cruelty. His works from this period were cerebral - kinda as if Beckett combined his plots with Lovecraftian cosmic horror.
Even before that there is whole symbolist, post-impressionist and decadent movements wildly transforming and expanding the language of expression into different directions - more abstract, more naturalist and more depraved.
All that stuff came together in Un Chien Andalou.
Bunuel just did The Fall of the House of Usher with Epstein (awesome film) but got fired midway through the production due to creative differences. Epstein wanted to make it nice and atmospheric, Bunuel wanted things to get ugly and intense but he wasnt in charge so he had to go and he had something to prove.
The goal was to pack punches and then some - cutting an eye with a razor, dragging a piano, hand covered in ants, etc. Dali was instrumental at coalescing the images into focused blocks. The key principle is collision of contrasts via visual matching and continuity editing tied together by syncopated pacing.
Traditionally, visual storytelling telegraphs whats going on - French impressionists did it like that (Bunuel worked with Epstein during that time so he was probably very-very over that shit). So instead of that Un Chien Andalou engages in deliberate differance of sensemaking dragging the viewer across its sandpaper. Just proper FUCK THAT SHIT thing.
As a result - spatial logic is all over the place, the temporality of the narrative is all over the place, characters just do stuff and everything just happens and each scene is littered with signifiers and signified that are easily discernible and have broad cultural symbolism but brought together they actively sabotage and mock natural inclination to interpret. It’s not that this movie doesn’t make sense per se - more like it doesn’t engage in these activities at all and looks at you funny for trying to do it.
His father, Salvador Luca Rafael Aniceto Dalí Cusí (1872–1950)[12] was a middle-class lawyer and notary,[13] an anti-clerical atheist and Catalan federalist, whose strict disciplinary approach was tempered by his wife, Felipa Domènech Ferrés (1874–1921),[14] who encouraged her son’s artistic endeavors.[15]
After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Dalí avoided taking a public stand for or against the Republic.[85] However, immediately after Franco’s victory in 1939, Dalí praised Catholicism and the Falange and was expelled from the Surrealist group.[95]
After Dalí’s return to his native Catalonia in 1948, he publicly supported Franco’s regime and announced his return to the Catholic faith.[217] Dalí was granted an audience with Pope Pius XII in 1949 and with Pope John XXIII in 1959. He had official meetings with General Franco in June 1956, October 1968, and May 1974.[218] In 1968, Dalí stated that on Franco’s death there should be no return to democracy and Spain should become an absolute monarchy.[219] In September 1975, Dalí publicly supported Franco’s decision to execute three alleged Basque terrorists and repeated his support for an absolute monarchy, adding: “Personally, I’m against freedom; I’m for the Holy Inquisition.” In the following days, he fled to New York after his home in Port Lligat was stoned and he had received numerous death threats.[220] When King Juan Carlos visited the ailing Dalí in August 1981, Dalí told him: “I have always been an anarchist and a monarchist.”[221]
wp:Un Chien Andalou
(my bold)
funnily enough this movie is not even top 10 Bunuel. That guy was mean motherfucker.
What kind of repressed emotions did these guys have? The ‘film’ is all strange violence and sexual assault.
Bunuel and Dali went through some shit. They were a part of Generation of 27 back in Spain and their thing was stirring the shit. Spanish society was very prude and button up so the crew was focused on trolling the living fuck out of that. That had a lot of pushback from spanish authorities. Bunuel came from religious upbringing and he had a problem with religion and wasn’t shy to a point about it (long story short - the worst thing about is the hypocrisy and other sick shit) and he was very mean and petty about it. And then he ended up in Paris hanging out with cool guys but never in the main event. Meanwhile Dali came from very controlling and oppressive family (that eventually disowned him) and he was very confused man because of that. But his family supported him so he wasn’t starving in Paris even though his life was deeply unstable and stressful.
Both were quite fed up by the way they weren’t taken seriously by the French so chips on the shoulder were involved.
Bunuel and Dali really liked american slapstick movies and its absurdist storytelling tropes that built upon vaudeville performances and reached beyond that with creative editing and special effects. At the same time, France had its own booming film industry going crazy and it had very healthy experimental scene. There were dada-adjacent films like Ballet Mechanique, Le Retour à la Raison and Entracte that went off the wall. Abel Gance was well into his blockbuster era. Rene Clair did surrealist comedies. Germaine Dulac, Jean Epstein and Louis Delluc were doing impressionist cinema. At the same time, the french theater had long-running tradition of grand guignol - it was schlocky, wacky, tacky, full of smoke and mirrors effects and it was gleefully rejecting highbrow theater conventions in favor of cheap thrills. This aspect also fascinated another prominent member of the surrealist crew Antonin Artaud who was gaining momentum in the mid 1920s with his Theatre Alfred Jarry. It was slightly before Artaud formulated his ideas into the Theater of Cruelty. His works from this period were cerebral - kinda as if Beckett combined his plots with Lovecraftian cosmic horror. Even before that there is whole symbolist, post-impressionist and decadent movements wildly transforming and expanding the language of expression into different directions - more abstract, more naturalist and more depraved.
All that stuff came together in Un Chien Andalou.
Bunuel just did The Fall of the House of Usher with Epstein (awesome film) but got fired midway through the production due to creative differences. Epstein wanted to make it nice and atmospheric, Bunuel wanted things to get ugly and intense but he wasnt in charge so he had to go and he had something to prove.
The goal was to pack punches and then some - cutting an eye with a razor, dragging a piano, hand covered in ants, etc. Dali was instrumental at coalescing the images into focused blocks. The key principle is collision of contrasts via visual matching and continuity editing tied together by syncopated pacing. Traditionally, visual storytelling telegraphs whats going on - French impressionists did it like that (Bunuel worked with Epstein during that time so he was probably very-very over that shit). So instead of that Un Chien Andalou engages in deliberate differance of sensemaking dragging the viewer across its sandpaper. Just proper FUCK THAT SHIT thing.
As a result - spatial logic is all over the place, the temporality of the narrative is all over the place, characters just do stuff and everything just happens and each scene is littered with signifiers and signified that are easily discernible and have broad cultural symbolism but brought together they actively sabotage and mock natural inclination to interpret. It’s not that this movie doesn’t make sense per se - more like it doesn’t engage in these activities at all and looks at you funny for trying to do it.
FWIW,
wp:Salvador Dalí
wq:Salvador Dalí
yeah, his life was very messed up and he was very contradictory person.