Un Chien Andalou

Salvador Dali's work was, and still is, of such high ability and style that you cannot help but feel this sense of awe when you see his work. The ability of his technique that goes into the vast and intricate landscapes is unbelievable. His artowkr is something that I am looking deeply into in art, and his photography I will briefly look at in photography. However the area I am looking at in his work at the moment, is his short film Un Chien Andalou and quite simply I am glad I do not have to look at it to deeply.

I think I had too high expectations before watching the film and to many pre-planned oppinions of what the film would be like. Being fairly familiar with Dali's painted work, I had already assumed that the film would be replicating his artwork. I was expecting more surreal imagery and a more varied use of bleak and surreal landscapes. The argument stands I guess, to how little I think a hole in a man's hand with ants crawling out of it, or a man cutting a woman's eye open with a razor blade is surreal. I think as it is a dream sequence there is no real meaning or symbolism of reality in it. As it is a dream sequence there is not a real strong narrative that you can follow throughout the piece, however there is a recurring feel or emotion of love and relationship in the piece, and this is represented by the constant usage of the two protagonists having various encounters. There is an hidden feel of longing and belonging to somebody in the slight element of love that is present in the sixteen minutes of film. The film, as it is so short has to capture its main qualities quite quickly, however as it is a dream sequence it is hard to see any real messgae or opinion of belief.

I do admire the ability not to establish any real narrative or point of origin in the piece, and the completely surrealist attitude toward composition and mise-en-scene. It makes the piece like the dream it is supposed to be, and makes the sense of creepiness and slight macabre actions in the film seem acceptable and believable, it is very convincing as a dream sequence. The ability that the film has to chop and change quickly, makes the sense of a dream sequence real, it holds no fixed narrative path however, but the fact that you know that it is a dream sequence, or at least as it appears to be a dream sequence, makes the obscure mise-en-scene and edited pace acceptable as also easy to follow. Simply put, the fact that you know it is surreal and a dream sequence makes the, what would normally be difficult to follow cuts easy to follow.

The only thing, unfortunately, that I will be carrying away from watching Dali's work, will be a stronger inner feel to comfortably and hopefully successfully allow my own piece to be slightly surreal. It has made me more confident, to see a juxtaposed and complicated narrative short film and to see that it works quite well, that my own work can have a same strength of surrealism throughout the piece, without it being confusing or boring.

Bunuel made clear in his writings about Un Chien Andalou, that he and Dali had numerous conversations about what the film should embody, the came to conclude that, "no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted." He went on to state, "Nothing, in the film, symbolizes anything. The only method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis."

- courtesy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un_Chien_Andalou

This sums up the film in exactly the same way that I viewed it, and what I actually expected in the film as well, that nothing makes sense and nothing has too. Surreal films can be about the subconscious and the dreams, memories and fantasy of the mind. Creating a surreal film allows me to capture the deeper feelings of human emotion in a fairly random and juxtaposed film. It will be a chance, like how it appears Dali was thinking when filming his film, to create something not replicating reality and to show symbolism and inner belief and emotion is a collection of random events.