Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

An Andalusian Dog

(Un chien Andalou, French, 1929)

In 1928 Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí made this 16-minute film, and it rocked the world. It has recently come out on DVD, along with all sort of documentaries and commentaries by experts on Surrealism. We didn’t watch any of those extras. What’s the point? The creators expressed purpose was, any time there was even a hint that the film would start to make any sort of sense, they would immediately change course at random. So the idea of a story is nonsense, and as for the symbolism, my feeling is that symbolism is in the eye of the beholder. Speaking of eyes … there is one of the most disturbing images ever put on film here, and it’s only the first of many. I first saw it almost 40 years ago, and the images have never left me. Anybody serious about cinema must see this. I’m not saying you’ll like it, but you will be amazed.