french films > Un chien Andalou

Un chien Andalou

Un Chien andalou

Un chien Andalou

Review score: * * * * *

cast: Luis Buñuel, Pierre Batcheff, Simone Mareuil

year: 1928

colour: no

certificate: -15

director: Luis Buñuel

runtime: 17

The film opens with a title card reading "Once upon a time". What may be the film's conclusion unfolds; a middle-aged man, the "husband" (played by Luis Buñuel), sharpens his razor at his balcony door and tests the razor on his thumb. He then opens the door, and idly fingers the razor while gazing at the moon, about to be engulfed by a thin cloud, from his balcony. There is a cut to a close-up of a younger woman, the "wife" (Simone Mareuil), being held by the "husband" as she calmly stares straight ahead. Another cut occurs to the moon being overcome by the cloud as the "wife's" eye is slit by the "husband" with his razor. The subsequent title card reads "eight years later". A slim younger man, the "lover" (Pierre Batcheff), bicycles down a calm urban street wearing what appears to be a nun's habit and a locked box with a strap around his neck. A cut occurs to the "wife", who has been reading anxiously in a sparingly-furnished upstairs apartment, and she hears the "lover" approaching on his bicycle. She promptly throws aside the book she was reading to look out the window. She emerges from the building and attempts to revive the "lover" after witnessing him collapse. Later, the "wife" assembles pieces of the "lover"'s clothing on a bed in the upstairs room, and seemingly through concentrating on the clothing causes the "lover" to appear near the door. The "lover" and the "wife" analyze his hand, which has a hole in the palm from which ants emerge. A slow transition occurs focusing on the armpit hair of an unknown figure and a sea urchin at a sandy location, then showing an androgynous seemingly blind figure, the "detective", who is poking at a severed hand in the street below the apartment with a cane while surrounded by an upset crowd and policemen.

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