Around the World in 24 Frames 09.18.09: Un Chien Andalou
Posted by Len Archibald on 09.18.2009
Part One of a retrospective of surrealist master Luis Buñuel - perhaps the most famous short film ever made. Let's get into the eyeball-slicing action...
Hey all! It's Friday! Hope you had a better week than Kanye West! When the President calls you a jackass, you got problems.
The Rant
R.I.P. Patrick Swayze: Nobody puts baby in a corner. That is all.
Something that's been bothering me lately as I scrounge in the comments section…Tyler Perry's latest film I Can Do Bad All By Myself debuted #1 at the box office. Suddenly, we get the expected bitch-fest:
"Tyler Perry makes crappy movies!"
"People are STOOPID!"
"He only makes movies for a certain audience!"
"He should try and expand his talents as a filmmaker!"
…And the obvious, "Tyler Perry in a Tyler Perry production written and directed by Tyler Perry blah blah blah…"
I can't believe I'm about to rant in DEFENSE of Tyler Perry, but even Jesus and Satan once conversed on a mountaintop.
I checked out I Can Do Bad… with my wife and her parents this past Saturday night. Was it going to change cinema forever? No. Was it an abomination? No. Was it predictable? Yes. Was it cringe-inducing? No. Did the audience enjoy themselves? Yes.
That final question is the most important one, and the one those who decide to bash Tyler Perry's should focus on. The point made is that he makes films for "a certain audience". That is very true. The thing that is also very true is that "certain audience" is the MAJORITY of North America.
Huh. Funny.
The paradox of film-criticism is the "armchair quarterbacking" that we all do. We see a movie and say, "oh this could have been done", "this wasn't expanded enough", "it wasn't DARK ENOUGH", etc. All the while forgetting that, yes, as much as it hurts to swallow that bitter pill…THEY are making the movies and are proving their worth. Yes, that includes Tyler Perry. His films are safe, predictible, bends a little towards the "preachy" and "church-y" and is apt to cast a lot of…uh…un-caucasians. But it WORKS. Maybe not for you. But then again, he's not making movies FOR YOU. He's making movies for those who enjoy the kind of movies he makes. People who like safe, predictible, overly-sentimental and occassionally preach films.
Just as someone who likes Tyler Perry movies will probably NEVER see a Hostel or Saw movie. Or why someone whose favoirite movie is The Horse Whisperer would cringe watching Crank. Or vice-versa.
I've always said this about people who choose to bash a movie – especially when they don't see it: If you don't like it, either a) don't comment on something you're not going to see or b) take the idea and MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN MOVIE. I'm sure you will wonder why 100% of the population will not see it. You may make some sort of excuse like, "Well, Len…Only certain types of people like what I make."
Ah haaaaaaaaa.
See, Tyler Perry and his movies are not a representation of the downfall or "STOOPIFICATION" of America. Inglorious Basterds is a $100 million film. 500 Days of Summer has received glowing word-of-mouth reviews that I'm sure will help when it arrives on DVD. And Halloween 2 tanked. So, you can't say the movie-going audience is dumb when they've made some pretty smart decisions. You can't force people to like the movies YOU like. And the audience for the movies that you DON'T like will always bee around. Not everyone is a sci-fi nerd. Or a horror nerd. Or a loud action movie nerd. Or a Romantic Comedy nerd. You could try to watch a movie before you judge it and not be so close-minded, or just skip it. That's what I do when I'm not interested in a film. I pretend it didn't even exist. In my mind, only Halloween 1 and 2, directed by John Carpenter are the only films made about Michael Myers.
Or, if you are feeling really daring, how about you go from watching a Tyler Perry film one day and watching Lars Von Trier's Antichrist the next. On a Sunday. "The Lord's day". And enjoy both films for what they are. Man, my taste is REALLY ecclectic.
Of course, all of this is moot. Tyler Perry cares about what you think as much as Rob Zombie cares about what I think. They're still going to bed on a mattress full of "Cash Rules Everything Around Me, C.R.E.A.M. get the money, dolla-dolla billz, ya'll!"
…And don't take the films that Tyler Perry makes himself as proof that he only likes a "certain" kind of film. Precious, which basically owned the Sundance Film Festival this year, has just opened in Toronto. He and Oprah Winfrey picked it up as Executive Producers AFTER the film was made. It is the complete antithesis of what he makes, with a dark setting, truly vile, yet complete human characters and a very "non Christian" subject matter. It is already making many "Best Of…" lists. I think if he has an eye for that kind of subject matter, he can produce it. He just chooses not to because he has never NEEDED to. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.[/end rant]
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I love movies. They represent escapism, art, intellect and spirituality. Some are nothing more than popcorn flicks, designed to ease the burden of "real-life" for a couple of hours. Some bring important issues to the forefront that challenges how we perceive our surroundings. The most important thing for me – if one is a serious film-goer – is to constantly expand and discover new movies. This includes experiencing stories told outside of North America.
Yes, I know: "I don't like to read while I watch movies". Well, neither do I, but I won't use that to prevent me from finding a great story within the screen. It is important, as human beings to discover other cultures and expand our perceptions of those different from us and how they see the world. There are reasons that Bergman, Kurosawa, Fellini, Ozu and Truffaut are important in the movie world – They are just great at what they do.
I intend to highlight a new film every week that is considered "foreign-language"; now that definition is simple, yet broad and complex. For example, if you need subtitles to understand the events of the plot, I will discuss it. If it is a film from a primarily English-speaking nation, but is *NOT* in English (i.e. Leolo or Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner from Canada), I will discuss. If it is a film from outside the U.S. and it *is* in English, I will not discuss (sorry, Brits & Aussies) – for now. My goal is to shed light on some of these gems, and help quell the insatiable appetites for those who can't live without seeing a new movie. Enjoy!
Un Chien Andalou (1928)
Spain/France
Dir: Luis Buñuel
Runtime: 16 min
Many writers and creative minds (including myself) usually engage themselves in a particular writing exercise where they go to sleep with a notebook under their pillow, and wake up to immediately scribble down images remembered from the previous night's dream(s). It's a rewarding experience, where we can find images created from our subconscious mind and apply them to a tangible project.
If artistic history has any justice, I would like to believe that filmmaker and surrealist Luis Buñuel was the creator of such a technique. This is a man who has gone on record to say that he wished to spend 22 of 24 hours a day in the dream-world and use the other two to record what he could remember from them. Like most creative minds, dreams were the muse that got his brain working, and was the starting point for some of his most audacious works.
Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) was a hell of a way to debut his mark in the annals of film history. Don't ask me what the title means – I don't think you could even ask Buñuel himself, as he would probably shrug you off. It has no meaning. It exists only in the world of that particular film and serves no other purpose other than that it is the film's title.
I first discovered Luis Buñuel around ten years ago through a little film called The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), and was immediately swept away to a world and a point of view of society I had never seen before. As with all great filmmakers when first uncovered by a new viewer, I was taught a new understanding of the power of film: it can shock, be funny, controversial, intelligent, make no sense at all and revel in the joy of its blissful ignorance. I saw the future of its influence; Woody Allen, televised sketch comedy made popular by SNL, SCTV and MadTV; the works of Charlie Kauffman, Marilyn Manson, N.W.A., Monty Python, South Park, David Lynch, The Sex Pistols, The Simpsons and Eminem.
I immediately sought after all his work and digested as much of it as I could over the years, but one film of his always eluded me: Un Chien Andalou. I finally got a hold of a VHS copy around seven years ago. I was perplexed, amazed, astonished and dizzy. The film is 80 years old and lasts a mere sixteen minutes. I think I have gone back to those sixteen minutes more than any other film I have in my library. It never ceases to inspire me or my imagination. I would like to think I get my cinematic point of view from this film and from Buñuel himself. I suppose I could be a cinematic anarchist.
I would call Buñuel a cinematic anarchist, perhaps the first. Buñuel left for Paris to become an artist, found work and learned on the job in the film industry as an assistant to Abel Gance - a great filmmaker in his day...He was quickly fired for insulting him where at that time he became a surrealist. He befriended Salvidor Dali in the famed "House of Dali", where they traded stories and dreams. Buñuel told Dali of a dream he'd had, in which a cloud sliced the moon in half, "like a razor blade slicing through an eye." Dali mentioned a dream of his own about a hand crawling with ants. Dali then suggested to start from there, make a movie, and that was that. They wrote the screenplay together, and Buñuel directed. Money was borrowed from Buñuel's mother, and the film was shot handheld in the matter of a few days. You want your ancestor of independent film, start right here.
The point of Un Chien Andalou was to throw as many shocking images as possible on the frame, under the stipulation that nothing could be related. "No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted." Both agreed unanimously over each shot and only kept the images that were surprising to them, without any explanation. You want your ancestor of self-indulgent filmmaking, look right here.
The surrealists of the 1920's hated the world they lived in. They were disgusted by the hypocrisy of politicians and religious figures, and were even more disgusted by the people who looked up to them. Buñuel would defend that they weren't terrorists, and instead of guns as their weapon of choice, they used scandal. At the time, Un Chien Andalou was a call to arms to the disenfranchised after the end of World War I, much like how "Anarchy in the UK" was an anthem for the anti-"Mod" misfits of 1970's Britain or "Straight Outta Compton" and "Fight the Power" was a rallying cry for the ghetto youth of the late 1980's. The sensation the film caused created almost a paradox of sorts as Buñuel's debut may be legendary for its initial shock to society while it was at the same time legendary for its stylistic techniques – and yet legendary for the sake of being legendary.
There are many famous shots in Un Chien Andalou, some that are ingrained into the subconscious mind and have been assimilated into other mediums; The shot of the moon being sliced, a hand crawling with ants, a man picking up a piano with priests and a dead donkey attached and dragging it – but the most famous shot, the one that most people who initially hear about the film are most interested in, is one where the "Husband" (Buñuel himself, face out of frame) opens the eye of his "Wife" (Simone Mareuil), takes a razor blade and slices the eye in a gruesome close-up. Buñuel used a calf's eye for the effect.
There are other shots: a transvestite on a bicycle, a hairy armpit, a sexual assault, a severed hand on a sidewalk. To explain the movie would be a simple laundry list of shots since none of them make any linear sense, nor are they linked in any way. The film has been analyzed countless times where people have found Freudian, Jungian and even Marxist meanings. Buñuel easily dismissed all theories as there is no rhyme or reason for anything.
It's hard to observe a film like Un Chien Andalou after understanding basic film language. Even when we watch the old Chaplin films, or D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, we're taught that we are witnessing a "story". This story moves in a "linear" fashion, where shots are cut to "link" to each other. A man looks a certain direction and then the shot is cut to a woman. We make the subconscious understanding that the man is looking at the woman. If the woman looks in the opposite direction and we go back to the man, we understand that they must be looking at each other. If we see a car driving, and then we see a shot from inside a vehicle, we assume we are inside that vehicle. Un Chien Andalou understood basic film language and decided to obliterate it. It failed and succeeded in doing so.
There are definitely shots where there seem to be no link. The hand on the pavement, the sliced eyeball, etc. – but there are some that seem to have some correlation. There is the impression that there is a story being told of the "Husband", the "Wife" and her "Lover" (Pierre Batcheff)…doing something in an apartment. We don't know what's truly going on except that at some point the Lover makes an advance towards the Wife and she dismisses it by picking up a tennis racket, before he picks up his strange load of priests, piano and donkey (one of the priests was Dali himself, uncredited.) Of course, that is my own interpretation, which is where the film succeeds. Anyone can find whatever story they want from this movie and make up their own minds as to what the "story" is…Which may lend credence to the notion that there is no story at all.
Roger Ebert supplies a great theory that I can only echo:
"...what if the people are not protagonists but merely models -- simply actors hired to represent people performing certain actions? We know that the car at the auto show does not belong to (and was not designed or built by) the model in the bathing suit who points to it. Buñuel might argue that his actors have a similar relationship to the events surrounding them."
Buñuel stated in reference to his debut film that the only possible investigation into any meaning of the film may be psychoanalysis. The film is a psychiatrist's wet dream, dealing with repressed feelings of sexual impotence, homosexuality, rape, "daddy issues", sadomasochism, "mob" mentality, even honor killings. But what can you make of a film that opens with "Once upon a time" and then quickly cuts to "eight years later" with no rhyme, reason or change in characters?
That doesn't mean the film wasn't exceptionally well-made; During the scene in which the Lover in his nun-outfit-on-bicycle falls, the Wife tosses the book. The image of the open book is an accurate reproduction of a painting by Vermeer, whom Dalí greatly admired and referenced often in his own work. The film contained several thematic references to Federico García Lorca (a famous writer who was in love with Dalí) and other writers of that time. The rotting donkeys attached to the piano was a reference to a popular children's novel, Platero y yo by Juan Ramón Jiménez, which Buñuel and Dalí hated. Buñuel and cinematographers Albert Duverger and Jimmy Berliet collaborated to use harsh and intense lighting to make the furred face of the dead calf in the "eye-slicing" scene look like human skin. There is a general difference in lighting between a sunny outdoor beach scene, as compared to the indoor scenes where some of the more disturbing events take place. Buñuel did his own editing, and did a very admirable job of piecing together his shots in the order he did, to keep the audience disjointed, yet involved.
The story of Un Chien Andalou's opening is one of the great "movie stories": There was a strong dislike of the French surrealists and their antics in the 1920's and Buñuel claims that he and Dali carried pockets full of rocks to throw at the audience in self-defense, anticipating the audience to give a harsh, perhaps even violent reaction to the film. The audience enjoyed it, which made the evening "less exciting", according to Dali. What makes this story even more interesting is the fact that it might not have happened at all. Buñuel is well known for exaggerating facts – he says that after watching a screening of Sergei Eisenstein's Soviet film The Battleship Potemkin, he and others immediately left the theater and tore up the streets to build barricades. Far fetched? Certainly. Possible? In those days, it was – but we'll never know for sure.
I have refrained from mentioning that this is a silent film (you may have guessed it was from the year of the film's release, though.) I'll explain why: The thought never crossed my mind, nor do I ever think of it that way while watching. Un Chien Andalou feels more like a music video, perhaps the first ever music video, consisting of excerpts from Richard Wagner's Liebestod and a recording of Ole guapa, an Argentinian tango. The music fits, and actually moves and gives voices and commentary to the film, giving it a dreamlike quality.
The legacy of Un Chien Andalou is extensive – as noted, among film enthusiasts, it is perhaps the most famous short film ever. David Bowie used this film as his "opening act" during his 1976 world tour to "set the tone for the evening." It's been studied by every major film critic and film school in the world; various scenes, including the opening, has been imitated and parodied (The Simpsons gave a great nod in a past episode.) It has been the muse for countless filmmakers and was a precursor to the French New Wave.
Both of the leading actors of the film eventually committed suicide – Pierre Batcheff overdosed on Veronal in 1932 in a hotel in Paris, and Simone Mareuil committed self-immolation in 1954 by dousing herself in gasoline and burning herself to death in a public square in Perigueux, Dordogne.
Buñuel, though – kept on going. He went on to shock more audiences throughout his career with gems such as L'Age D'or, Belle De Jour, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Phantom of Liberty. He and Salvidor Dali had a falling out before shooting L'Age D'or and never reconciled. He never explained or promoted his films, yet he was able to receive commercial success, fame and many awards over the years.
In our desensitized society, with "torture porn" films, YouPorn and countless newscasts that give viewers the most grizzly details of violence, Un Chien Andalou is now considered tame by today's standards. We can see naked people just by clicking a mouse and we have the technology to create macabre scenarios at our fingertips (through Wikipedia or YouTube.) There isn't much that can stimulate our senses, so why do filmmakers, film historians and critics continue to heap praise on a sixteen-minute short film? The conventions were radical, its influence is limitless and its filmmaker moved on to become one of the all time greats. I wonder if Buñuel is happy or sad that the surrealists seemed to succeed in what they set out to accomplish?
Un Chien Andalou's most famous scene:
{Film Passport Stamped]
Coming Attractions: We continue through the twisted mind of Luis Buñuel and explore his most successful film...Here's a clue: I hope you eat before you read it cause you won't get another chance.
Questions or comments? Email me at aa24frames@aol.com!!!
