The 1929 surrealist short film Un Chien Andalou, directed
by Luis Bunuel, has one of the strangest and yet most visually striking of
opening sequences in film.
The main goal of Bunuel’s film is not to tell a believable
story or straightforward narrative, rather the intention to shock audiences
with its juxtaposition of images, disjunctive editing style and use of
mise-en-scene. Through this, Bunuel uses disconnected images and connects them
through shock cuts in order to present the resulting visual horror to the
audience. A cut from the man with the razor on the balcony to the night sky
shows a thin line of cloud moving towards the circular moon, therefore
connecting to the infamous eye cutting scene. Another example of disjunctive editing is the
famous image of the man with the razor holding open a woman’s eye as if
preparing to slice it open, which then cuts to a dead calf’s eye being cut instead.
Anyone that goes back and rewatches it (God forbid) will
find that these are two completely different shots, but the overall action
remains the same. The shock cut between the night sky and the cutting of the
eye also shows two completely different shots, but convey the same action on
screen. Bunuel creates symbolism between each two shots, but a viewer would
know that regular weather patterns have no real connection to a motivation behind
wanting to inflict grievous harm upon a person. Therefore, the goal of
surrealism is to create a world that has qualities of but also does not exist
in real life.
While the three other films talked about all have openings
that occur later in the narrative and thus require explanation as a result,
Bunuel’s opening is constructed without an explanation for what is seen on
screen, as it functions as a prologue completely unconnected to the rest of the
film. In Goodfellas, violence is used to accurately portray mob dealings as
close as it can, where in Bunuel’s film it serves no real purpose outside of
startling imagery. Fight Club and Trainspotting’s openings are a culmination of
events preceding it but told out of order, and violence is implied from the
mise-en-scene of a gun in the narrator’s mouth in the former, and running from
the authorities in the latter, while Bunuel’s film does not imply any violence.
REFERENCES:
“Luis Bunuel: Un Chien andalou (1928).” July
19th 2013. YouTube. Web video.
Accessed 27th April 2015.
Corrigan, Timothy & Patricia White. The Film Experience: An Introduction.
Third Edition. New York: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2012. 471, 479, 480. Print.
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