Un Chien Andalou - Dark Publications

Location: Home » video » General » Un Chien Andalou

Similar Items:

•	Luis Bunuel's L'Age d'Or
•	Avant Garde - Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s
•	Battleship Potemkin (The Ultimate Edition) (2pc) (Full B&W)
•	Breathless - Criterion Collection
•	The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Restored Authorized Edition)

Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.com
Un Chien Andalou remains a startling artifact suggesting ways in which film can express the subconscious. The result of Luis Bunuel's collaboration with Salvador Dali, the 17-minute, 1929 film was designed expressly to shock and provoke. Opening with the canonical eyeball-slashing sequence and divided into baffling "chapters", this is a work of art obsessed with religion, lust, decay, violence, and death. Un Chien Andalou isn't simply one of the great works of the surrealist movement, but a segment of cinematic DNA that irrevocably altered the aesthetics of film. In its tangled corridors you find the seeds to the disappearing-mouth bit in The Matrix, the carcasses strewn through Peter Greenaway's A Zed and Two Noughts and pretty much the entire oeuvre of David Lynch. --Ryan Boudinot

Description
Filmed in Paris in 1929, UN CHIEN ANDALOU is regarded as the first film produced purely from within the Surrealist movement and is a landmark in the history of cinema. Loving treatment to DVD includes, as bonus material, an interview/documentary with Jua

Customer Reviews: Read 52 more reviews...

1 out of 5 stars

deserves better treatment for DVD January 2, 2005
28 out of 30 found this review helpful

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.

4 out of 5 stars

Mesmerizing Surrealistic Short April 9, 2005
24 out of 27 found this review helpful

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.

1 out of 5 stars

Great film, horrible DVD September 16, 2005
21 out of 25 found this review helpful

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.

5 out of 5 stars

simple yet effective January 17, 2000
10 out of 10 found this review helpful

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.

5 out of 5 stars

Un Chien Andalou October 12, 2005
9 out of 12 found this review helpful

This is an excellent surrealist film. With it, I am well pleased.

Powered by Associate-O-Matic

T-shirts, Posters

Pentagram T-shirts, bags, etc...

Gothic Posters