[Update 06/05/2023: Need rewatch this film and redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]In 1929 a 29-year-old Luis Bunuel asked his mother for $2,500 to make a movie. He spent half of the money in Paris and the other half making quite possibly the greatest movie of all time. Not a bad deal.
"When I made the film, I was absolutely sure that it was going to be a
failure; but I didn't care because I had the conviction that it expressed
something, until then never said in pictures. Above all it was sincere."
UN CHIEN ANDALOU was Bunuel's first film and only 16 minutes long, but in that 16 minutes he changed Cinema forever and 65 years later (when I saw it for the first time) it changed my life forever. Made in collaboration with fellow Surrealist Salvador Dali - nobody will ever know how much the collaboration was, but based on their later separate work I personally think the majority was Bunuel. But you do see Dali's influence in stuff like the garden scene, the woman's bare back and the cocktail shaker bell.
THE ANDALUSIAN DOG doesn't feature a dog at all, instead the narrative is more like dream flow of non-connecting visuals and objects and time. There is no explaining any of it, but it is a delight to watch the film over and over and dissecting everything. Not over analyze it, but just pick out all the small details. I won't do it here, there's plenty of books that have already done it.
Highest recommendation possible. UN CHIEN ANDALOU shouldn't just be watch, but absorbed into your mind.
