Un Chien Andalou (1929)

The Worst Film Ever

Thanks for the memories!

How sad is this?

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Good, entertaining, but what the hell happened? So there was a couple but then one of them died and their ghost haunts the girl? And then the girl moves out to get man who torments the ghost back?? But the ghost kills him and his body is dumped in a random field where he barely grasps a memory of the girl??? But then it was all just a dream and the couple is actually living happily on the beach???? but then they're dead?????

I just simply don't like these surreal movies. They make no sense, they offer no atmosphere. They are barely interesting and do not entertain. I think that I should stick to films with a story and where stuff happens rather than films that show you art and nothing else. If they didn't have the razor blade in the eye I would never have wasted my time.

There are some films whose cultural and cinematographic value is much more related to the people involved in it than to their quality or interest as "story told". This movie is one of them. Its so repulsive and incomprehensible that only Buñuel and Dalí would be able to make it worthy of some appreciation. It often recalls some 1970s trash films, and short films made by pseudo-intellectuals, which still pollute the route of European film festivals. Thus, this film is very difficult to swallow, even by confessed connoisseurs of surrealism. Having no plot, it consists of a succession of images, often graphically provocative, highly inadvisable to sensitive people. Just that. Personally, I often compare Buñuel to Edd Wood, but maybe the latter can be even better that the Spanish director, in the sense that he, at least, managed to make some funny films.

Although it's best known for the infamous eye-slicing scene, Bunuel and Dali's film is really more of a series of visual rhymes tied together with dream logic where space and time are irrelevant. For example, at one point a scene stops for a second to show a title card reading "sixteen years earlier" and then continues with the action as if nothing happened. What we're left with are images. Some disturbing (a group of people gathered around a severed hand lying in the street), others comical (a man rushes forward only to find he is suddenly dragging two pianos). What is it mean? Nothing, but that's basically the point. Bunuel cuts from one strange joke to the next in a way that almost makes sense if, and only if, we accept the logic of the film. It's a must watch for fans of surrealism, anyone interested in learning about film, or anyone who enjoys absurdist humor. For some, this could be a horror movie. If you're a fan of some of the weirder Monty Python buts, for example, this can rank among Chaplin and Keaton as one of the best silent comedies.