An Andalusian Dog
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(, ''An Andalusian Dog'') is a 1929 French silent
short film A short film is a film with a low running time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of not more than 40 minutes including all credits". Other film o ...
directed, produced and edited by
Luis Buñuel Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish and Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians and directors to be one of the greatest and ...
, who also co-wrote the screenplay with
Salvador Dalí Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (11 May 190423 January 1989), known as Salvador Dalí ( ; ; ), was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, ...
. Buñuel's first film, it was initially released in a limited capacity at Studio des Ursulines in Paris, but became popular and ran for eight months. has no plot in the conventional sense of the word. With disjointed chronology, jumping from the initial "once upon a time" to "eight years later" without events or characters changing, it uses dream logic in narrative flow that can be described in terms of the then-popular Freudian free association, presenting a series of tenuously related scenes. is a seminal work of
surrealist cinema Surrealist cinema is a modernist approach to film theory, criticism, and production, with origins in Paris in the 1920s. The Surrealist movement used shocking, irrational, or absurd imagery and Freudian dream symbolism to challenge the traditiona ...
.


Synopsis

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. "Eight years later", a young man bicycles down an urban street wearing a nun's
habit A habit (or wont, as a humorous and formal term) is a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously. A 1903 paper in the '' American Journal of Psychology'' defined a "habit, from the standpoint of psychology, ...
and carrying a striped box with a strap around his neck. The woman from the first scene hears him approaching and casts aside the book she was reading. She goes to the window and sees the young man lying on the curb, his bicycle on the ground. She emerges from the building and attempts to revive him. Later, she assembles pieces of the young man's clothing on a bed. The man then appears near the door, with ants emerging from a hole in his hand. An androgynous young woman pokes at a severed human hand in the street below the apartment while surrounded by a large crowd. The crowd clears when a policeman places the hand in the box previously carried by the young man and gives it to the androgynous woman. She stands in the middle of the street clutching the box, where she is run over by a car. The man in the apartment seems to take sadistic pleasure in the accident, and he gestures at the woman in the room with him, leering and groping her breasts. The woman resists him at first, but then allows him to molest her as he imagines her nude. The woman pushes him away as he drifts off and attempts to escape by running to the other side of the room. The man corners her as she reaches for a racquet in self-defense, but he suddenly picks up two ropes and drags two grand pianos containing dead
donkey The donkey or ass is a domesticated equine. It derives from the African wild ass, ''Equus africanus'', and may be classified either as a subspecies thereof, ''Equus africanus asinus'', or as a separate species, ''Equus asinus''. It was domes ...
s, stone tablets containing the
Ten Commandments The Ten Commandments (), or the Decalogue (from Latin , from Ancient Greek , ), are religious and ethical directives, structured as a covenant document, that, according to the Hebrew Bible, were given by YHWH to Moses. The text of the Ten ...
, two pumpkins, and two priests who are attached to the ropes. The woman escapes the room. The man chases after her, but she traps his hand, which is infested with ants, in the door. She then finds him in the next room, dressed in his nun's garb. At "around three in the morning", the man is roused from his rest by the door buzzer (represented by a cocktail shaker). The woman goes to answer the door and does not return. Another young man arrives in the apartment, gesturing angrily at the first. The second man forces the first to throw away his nun's clothing and then makes him stand with his face to the wall. "Sixteen years ago", the second man admires art supplies and books on the table near the wall and forces the first man to hold two of the books as he stares at the wall. The first man eventually shoots the second when the books abruptly turn into revolvers. The second man, now in a meadow, dies while swiping at the back of a nude female figure which suddenly disappears into thin air. A group of men come and carry his corpse away. The woman returns to the apartment and sees a death's-head moth. The first man sneers at her as she retreats and wipes his mouth off his face with his hand; her armpit hair then attaches itself to where his mouth had been. She looks at him with disgust and leaves the apartment while sticking her tongue out. As she exits her apartment, the street is replaced by a coastal beach, where she meets a third man with whom she walks arm in arm. He shows her the time on his watch and they walk near the rocks, where they find the remnants of the first young man's nun's clothing and the box. They walk away clutching each other happily and making romantic gestures. "In Spring", the couple are buried in sand up to their elbows, motionless.


Cast

* Simone Mareuil as Young Girl (as Simonne Mareuil) * Pierre Batcheff as Young Man and Second Young Man (as Pierre Batchef) *
Luis Buñuel Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish and Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians and directors to be one of the greatest and ...
as Man in Prologue (uncredited) *
Salvador Dalí Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (11 May 190423 January 1989), known as Salvador Dalí ( ; ; ), was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, ...
as Seminarist and as Man on Beach (uncredited) * Robert Hommet as Third Young Man (uncredited) * Kieran Agterberg as Seminarist (uncredited) * Fano Messan as Androgynous Young Woman (uncredited) * Jaume Miravitlles as Fat seminarist (uncredited)


Production


Development

The screenplay of the film is based on two dreams of co-creators Buñuel and Dali. The idea began when Buñuel was working as an assistant director for Jean Epstein in France. Buñuel told Dalí at a restaurant one day about a dream in which a cloud sliced the moon in half "like a razor blade slicing through an eye". Dalí responded that he had dreamed about a hand crawling with ants. Excitedly, Buñuel declared: "There's the film, let's go and make it." The two decided to write a script based on the concept of repressed emotions. The title of the film alludes to a Spanish idiom: "the Andalusian dog howls –someone has died!” The screenplay was written in a few days. According to Buñuel, they adhered to a simple rule: “Do not dwell on what required purely rational, psychological or cultural explanations. Open the way to the irrational. It was accepted only that which struck us, regardless of the meaning ... We did not have a single argument. A week of impeccable understanding. One, say, said: 'A man drags double bass.' 'No,' the other objected. And the objection was immediately accepted as completely justified. But when the proposal of one liked the other, it seemed to us magnificent, indisputable and immediately introduced into the script.” In deliberate contrast to the approach taken by Jean Epstein and his peers, which was to never leave anything in their work to chance, with every aesthetic decision having a rational explanation and fitting clearly into the whole, Buñuel made clear throughout his writings that, between Dalí and himself, the only rule for the writing of the script was: "No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted." He also stated: "Nothing, in the film, symbolizes anything. The only method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps,
psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious mind, unconscious processes and their influence on conscious mind, conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on The Inte ...
." In his 1939 autobiography, Buñuel stated: "In the film the aesthetics of Surrealism are combined to some of Freud's discoveries. The film was totally in keeping with the basic principle of the school, which defined Surrealism as 'Psychic Automatism', unconscious, capable of returning to the mind its true functions, beyond any form of control by reason, morality or aesthetics."


Filming

The film was financed by Buñuel's mother, and shot in
Le Havre Le Havre is a major port city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy (administrative region), Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the right bank of the estuary of the Seine, river Seine on the English Channel, Channe ...
and at the Billancourt Studios in Paris over a period of ten days in March 1928. It is a black and white, 35 mm, silent film, with a running time of 17 minutes (although some sources state 24 minutes) and a physical length of 430 meters. For many years, published and unpublished reports have circulated that Buñuel had used a dead goat's eye, or that of a dead sheep, or of a dead donkey, or other animal, in the notorious eyeball-slicing scene. However, Buñuel claimed that he had used a dead calf's eye.Turrent, T. and J. de la Colina (1993), ''Conversations avec Luis Buñuel'',
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
, p. 32.
Through the use of intense lighting and bleaching of the calf's skin Buñuel attempted to make the furred face of the animal appear as human skin. During the bicycle scene, the woman seated on a chair and reading throws her book aside when she notices the fallen man. When the book lies open, it reveals a reproduction of a painting by Johannes Vermeer, an artist Dalí greatly admired and frequently referenced in his own works. In Buñuel's original script, the final shot was to feature the corpses of the man and woman "consumed by swarms of flies". However, this was modified due to budget limitations, with the film ending with a still shot of the man and woman half-buried in the sand. The movie contains several thematic references to
Federico García Lorca Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936) was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27, a g ...
and other writers of that time. The rotting donkeys are a reference to the popular children's novel '' Platero y yo'' by Juan Ramón Jiménez, which Buñuel and Dalí both hated. – Excerpt from letter written by Buñuel and Dalí to Jiménez, 1928. French filmmaker and anthropologist
Jean Rouch Jean Rouch (; 31 May 1917 – 18 February 2004) was a French Filmmaking, filmmaker and anthropologist. He is considered one of the founders of cinéma vérité in France. Rouch's practice as a filmmaker, for over 60 years in Africa, was char ...
has reported that after filming was complete, Buñuel and Dalí had run out of money, forcing Buñuel to edit the film personally in his kitchen without the aid of any technical equipment.


Reception

The first screening of took place at Studio des Ursulines. Notable attendees of the première included
Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...
,
Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , ; ), was a Swiss-French architectural designer, painter, urban planner and writer, who was one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture ...
,
Jean Cocteau Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau ( , ; ; 5 July 1889 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, film director, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost avant-garde artists of the 20th-c ...
, Christian Bérard and Georges Auric, in addition to the entirety of
André Breton André Robert Breton (; ; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') ...
's Surrealist group. The audience's positive reception of the film amazed Buñuel, who was relieved that no violence ensued. Dalí, on the contrary, was reportedly disappointed, feeling that the audience's reaction made the evening "less exciting". Buñuel later claimed that prior to the show, he had put stones in his pockets "to throw at the audience in case of disaster." Buñuel intended to shock and insult the intellectual bourgeoisie of his youth, later saying: "Historically, this film represents a violent reaction against what at that time was called 'avantgarde cine,' which was directed exclusively to the artistic sensibility and to the reason of the spectator." Against his hopes and expectations, the film was a huge success amongst the French elite, leading Buñuel to remark: "What can I do about the people who adore all that is new, even when it goes against their deepest convictions, or about the insincere, corrupt press, and the inane herd that saw beauty or poetry in something which was basically no more than a desperate impassioned call for murder?" After its "triumphant premiere", was bought by the owner of "Studio-28". During its eight-month run, forty or fifty informers came to the police with a demand to ban it. This was the beginning of years of insults and threats that haunted Buñuel until his old age. A likely apocryphal account claimed that two miscarriages occurred while watching the film. Despite the criticism, however, the film was never banned. Through their accomplishment with , Dalí and Buñuel became the first filmmakers to be officially welcomed into the ranks of the Surrealists by the movement's leader André Breton, an event recalled by film historian
Georges Sadoul Georges Sadoul (; 4 February 1904 – 13 October 1967) was a French film critic, journalist and cinema writer. He is known for writing encyclopedias of film and filmmakers, many of which have been translated into English. Biography Sadoul w ...
: "Breton had convoked the creators to our usual venue he Café Radionbsp;... one summer's evening. Dalí had the large eyes, grace, and timidity of a gazelle. To us, Buñuel, big and athletic, his black eyes protruding a little, seemed exactly like he always is in , meticulously honing the razor that will slice the open eye in two."


Sequel

Among the most enthusiastic viewers of the film were the wealthy couple Viscount
Charles Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English language, English and French language, French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic, Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''* ...
and Marie-Laure de Noailles, who commissioned Dalí and Buñuel to create a sequel, of around the same length, with sound, to be called ''La Bête Andalouse'', in order to affirm its connection with ''Un Chien''. Dalí stated that the theme of the new film was to parallel that of the first: "to present the straight and pure 'conduct' of someone who continues to pursue love despite wretched humanitarian ideals, patriotism and the other poor mechanisms of reality." This new film ultimately was released in 1930 under the title '' L'Age d'Or.'' The sequel was not a success with Parisian high society. First shown in November 1930, it was received extremely coldly. The next day, Charles de Noailles learned that he had been expelled from the Jockey Club de Paris. The de Noailles family quickly withdrew the film after it was banned by the
Prefecture of Police of Paris The Paris Police Prefecture ( ), officially the Police Prefecture (), is the unit of the French Minister of the Interior (France), Ministry of the Interior that provides police, emergency services, and various administrative services to the po ...
.


Soundtrack

During the original 1929 screening in Paris, Buñuel selected music which he played live on a gramophone. Modern prints of the film feature a soundtrack consisting of excerpts from
Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most o ...
's "
Liebestod "" ( German for "love death") is the title of the final, dramatic music from the 1859 opera ' by Richard Wagner. It is the climactic end of the opera, as Isolde sings over Tristan's dead body. The music is often used in film and television pro ...
" from his opera ''
Tristan und Isolde ''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is a music drama in three acts by Richard Wagner set to a German libretto by the composer, loosely based on the medieval 12th-century romance ''Tristan and Iseult'' by Gottfried von Stras ...
'' and a recording of two Argentinian
tangos Tangos may refer to: * Tangos (song), "Tangos" (song), a song popularized in Spain * Tangos (district), a district or barangay in Navotas, Philippines * ''Tangos'', a 1973 album by Buenos Aires 8 * Tangos (album), ''Tangos'' (album), a 2014 album ...
, "Tango Argentino" and "Recuerdos" by the Vicente Alvarez & Carlos Otero et son orchestre. They were first added to a print of the film in 1960 under Buñuel's supervision.


Influence

Film scholar Ken Dancyger has argued that might be the genesis of the filmmaking style present in the modern
music video A music video is a video that integrates a song or an album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device intended to ...
.
Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...
called it an inspiration for low-budget
independent films An independent film, independent movie, indie film, or indie movie is a feature film or short film that is produced outside the major film studio system in addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies (or, in ...
. ''
Premiere A premiere, also spelled première, (from , ) is the debut (first public presentation) of a work, i.e. play, film, dance, musical composition, or even a performer in that work. History Raymond F. Betts attributes the introduction of the ...
'' ranked the opening scene at number ten on its list of "The 25 Most Shocking Moments in Movie History". The Japanese filmmaker
Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker who List of works by Akira Kurosawa, directed 30 feature films in a career spanning six decades. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the History of film, history of cinema ...
cited as one of his favorite films. The film was shown before every concert of
David Bowie David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer, songwriter and actor. Regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Bowie was acclaimed by critics and musicians, pa ...
's Isolar – 1976 Tour. The lyrics of the Pixies song " Debaser" reference .


See also

*
List of works by Salvador Dalí Salvador Dalí produced over 1,500 paintings over the course of his career. He also produced illustrations for books, lithographs, designs for theater sets and costumes, a great number of drawings, dozens of sculptures, and various other projects, ...
* List of cult films * List of films with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes *
Surrealism Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...
*
Surrealist cinema Surrealist cinema is a modernist approach to film theory, criticism, and production, with origins in Paris in the 1920s. The Surrealist movement used shocking, irrational, or absurd imagery and Freudian dream symbolism to challenge the traditiona ...


Notes


References


Further reading

*
«Film, Freud and Paranoia: Dalí and the Representation of Male Desire in An Andalusian Dog.» ''Diacritics''


External links


Un perro andaluz
The film, online at
RTVE The Corporación de Radio y Televisión Española (; ), known as Radiotelevisión Española (''Spanish Radio and Television'', RTVE), is the Spanish national public Broadcasting, television and radio broadcaster. It is a state-owned enterprise f ...
. * *
''Un Chien Andalou''
analyzed by Michael Koller
''Un Chien Andalou,''
fro
''Shatter, Rupture, Break''
one of the Art Institute of Chicago'
digital scholarly catalogues
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chien Andalou, Un 1929 films 1929 short films Surrealist films Film with screenplays by Salvador Dalí Films directed by Luis Buñuel French black-and-white films French silent short films French independent films 1920s avant-garde and experimental films Censored films 1929 directorial debut films