Un Chien Andalou
The first time I encountered this little film was way back when I was at the permanent exhibition of the Cinemathèque Francaise in Paris. They have shown quite a lot of short clips of films (including the sequence in which Charlie Chaplin falls into the machine in „Modern Times“), and this was quite a memorable and prominent one. Although I have planned on seeing this film ever since I went to the Cinemathèque Francaise, it was only by pure coincidence that I have finally watched it: They showed it at the Scharf-Gerstenberg museum in Berlin, an art museum specializing in surrealism. It makes sense since this is probably the most typical example of a surrealist movie, and obviously I did not understand of it at all. The Freudian symbols and Dali’s style were all there, but it didn’t help to make any sense. Not that I minded, it’s more like the whole movie is a dream; if it were not so old, it felt like it could have directly sprung from my dreams.
My own dreams are a little bit weird though; I rarely dream of landscapes and never of animals, but there is a proportionally high appearance of staircases, ruins and elevators. Especially the elevators are fascinating if you ask me, I don’t even live in a house with elevators, and the elevators of my dreams are always much more dramatic and stylish, some of them even impossible to construct in real life.
So, enough of my ranting, I think I made myself quite clear: „Le Chien Andalou“ is not the type of movie to understand or feel, it’s the type of movie that inspires.
I feel the strong desire to state that it was me who went into this room and the boys followed me. :3
I ignored the symbolism so you’re not the only one and the cutting scene actually made me cringe a bit, which is kind of irrational as I’m used to even more images… I guess I’m overly sensitive about eyes.