Un Chien Andalou
Un Chien Andalou and the Language of Desire
According to Rosemary Lambert in the Cambridge Introduction to the History of Art: The Twentieth Century, "Surrealism was concerned with exploring and illustrating the unconscious mind" (40-41). This exploration and illustration was carried out with the use of dream imagery, symbols, puns, and with a general attitude of complete freedom of expression. The surrealists were concerned with liberating the imagination from its rational and scientific chains by making use of dreams and fantasy (41). Bunuel, himself, in his Notes on the Making of Un Chien Andalou, has the following to say about the surrealist movement and its relation to his film:
Un Chien Andalou would not have existed if …show more content…
the movement called surrealist had not existed. For its "ideology," its psychic motivation and the systematic use of the poetic image as an arm to overthrow accepted notions corresponds to the characteristics of all authentically surrealist work. This film has no intention of attracting nor pleasing the spectator; indeed, on the contrary, it attacks him, to the degree that he belongs to a society with which surrealist is at war. (Stauffacher 29 - 30).
The film, Un Chien Andalou, written, directed, and produced by Luis Bunuel with contributions from Salvadore Dali, is an excellent example of a surrealist work as attested to by Andre Breton himself (Aranta 63).
Bunuel and Dali make use of dream imagery, symbolism, and the pun in an all out attack on social convention in an attempt to force the audience to deal with the repressed and taboo subjects of sexual desire, violence and death (63-64). While, on the one hand, Bunuel admits that the film is, indeed, a surrealist work, on the other hand, he is adamant in stating that "NOTHING in the film SYMBOLIZES ANYTHING" (Stauffacher 30 [Bunuel 's emphasis]). This statement seems rather silly at best and at worst ludicrous, for at a very basic level, at least, it would seem that once something (whether animate or inanimate) is placed before a camera and filmed it immediately upon projection can become symbolic of something in some way, shape, or form. As Dudley Andrew so succinctly puts it in Concepts in Film Theory: "Cinema, as a cultural institution, is by definition a symbolic system, mediating the spectator and the world in countless exchangeable ways" (150). For example, a gun can be symbolic of death and violence, a book can be symbolic of education and culture, the color white can be symbolic of purity or innocence, and a priest is usually symbolic of religion. All of the examples mentioned above (however obvious) and more, at least possibly, are in operation in Un …show more content…
Chien Andalou irrespective of Bunuel 's denial of the use of symbolism. In fact, there is so much symbolism to be found in Un Chien Andalou, that it is quite possible to present a reading of the film which gives it at least some semblance of coherence--a coherence it might otherwise be impossible to draw from the film without the symbolism, whether implicit or explicit. In some respects, Bunuel 's Un Chien Andalou can be seen as a precursor (by more than fifty years) of some of Laura Mulvey 's sentiments in her article "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." In this article Mulvey says that "Hollywood...always managed to restrict itself to a formal mise-en-scene reflecting the dominant ideological concept of the cinema" (Mulvey 747). She goes on to call for
A cinema to be born which is radical in both a political and an aesthetic sense and challenges the basic assumptions of the mainstream film...to highlight the ways in which its formal preoccupations reflect the physical obsessions of the society which produced it, and, further, to...start specifically by reacting against those obsessions and assumptions...[and] daring to break with normal pleasurable expectations in order to conceive a new language of desire (Mulvey 747-748).
It is rather apparent that Bunuel has broken away from any type of formal mise-en-scene; moreover, Un Chien Andalou immediately strikes the viewer as a revolutionary act of sorts aimed at convention--moral, social, and cinematic. From several of Bunuel 's statements regarding Un Chien Andalou; e.g., "I don 't want the film to please you but to offend you. I would be sorry if you enjoyed it" (Aranta 64), and "When Un Chien Andalou was shown for the first time, I was prepared for a public uproar and stuffed my pockets full of stones just in case" (Kyrou 122)--it becomes clear that Bunuel 's intent is to provoke his audience not please them. Bunuel, in this film, is very much concerned with "the language of desire," and he seems to want to bring to the attention of the conscious mind the violent clash in the unconscious mind between desire and the object of that desire. In the opening sequence of the film, a man slices open a woman 's eyeball with a straight razor. The scene is shot in an extreme close-up that adds immensely to the sense of horror and shock. The razor and the eyeball are symbols, respectively, for the male and female sex organs, and their coming together as a violent clash. There is also a paradox here in that the violence of the act itself is offset by the apparent outward dispassionateness exhibited by both the man and the woman. This act seems to be performed (much like the sexual act in many cases) more out of habit or boredom than out of any real passion or desire. This scene can also be viewed as a shocking announcement to the audience that they will be seeing things from the inside out, as it were; i.e., from a completely new perspective. This opening scene also sets the tone for the further contrast of violence and dispassion throughout the film. Furthermore, it is interesting that it is the director, Bunuel himself, playing the "eye-opening" antagonist. Bunuel seems to present this violence to the viewers in order to shock them into a different mode of looking at or perceiving a film, and/or the very world in which they live. In the next sequence, we see a young man riding a bicycle down a street. The young man is dressed in a suit, and over the suit, he wears a white skirt, a frilly, white collar, and a white hat. This outfit seems to indicate a sexually ambiguous, or maybe a sexually unaware young boy. Also, attached to a cord around his neck is a striped box. The box has a sense of importance and/or mystery about it. The box, when seen in an extreme close shot, is secured with a lock. This would symbolize the young man 's sexuality, that has yet to be awakened and released (or at least of something secret). The young man, while riding along, begins to slow down and eventually falls over into the gutter. He lies there helplessly until a young woman, who has been watching him pass by from her apartment window, comes to his aid. In the next scene, the woman has laid out the young man 's feminine accouterments on her bed, possibly symbolizing the young man 's shedding of his feminine side and the awakening acknowledgment of his male side. She stares at her handiwork as if she might be a little nervous about what she may have set in motion between the man and herself. The man suddenly appears behind her staring, dumbstruck, at his hand, which is covered with ants crawling out of a hole in his palm. This symbolizes the arousal of the young man 's sexual desire, which is tinged with fear and uncertainty. In the next shot, we have a visual pun very effectively expressed through a series of dissolves in which the ants on the man 's hand materialize into the armpit hair of a woman lying on a beach. The armpit hair, in turn, is transformed into a sea urchin, and the sea urchin, in the final dissolve, becomes the hair on the head of a rather androgynous looking woman who is standing in the street poking at a severed hand with a stick. After a series of cuts from an extreme high angle view of the woman poking at the hand, to an extreme low angle view of the young man looking down from the apartment window, we learn that the young man is completely engrossed in watching the androgynous looking woman in the street from above through the other woman 's apartment window. Both of the hands in this series of dissolves; i.e., the hand crawling with ants and the severed hand--might be viewed as phallic symbols (I understand that this might be considered a bit of a stretch.) As the young man 's sexual desire (symbolized by the hand crawling with ants) is aroused, he is simultaneously struck by counter feelings of guilt and shame.
These counter feelings are symbolized by the severed hand, (fear of castration?), and the woman poking at it (the woman is dressed as a man recalling the original sexual ambiguity of the young man when we first see him riding the bicycle decked out in the feminine, white frills). The young man 's sexual desires eventually override the feelings of guilt and shame when the severed hand is placed in the striped box (out of sight out of mind). This is the very same box that the young man was wearing around his neck, indicating his powerful, sexual desires are, now, hidden and safely locked away. However, once his sexual desires have been aroused, they can no longer be safely kept hidden; in fact, they become so overpowering that trying to suppress them leads to violence. Hence, the young man watches with great excitement, and in apparent ecstasy, as the androgynous woman is run over by a car, thus completely squelching the conflicting feelings of guilt and shame--at least for the moment, for they are sure to return. We have seen the young man stirred from his original state of dispassion to a sexual awakening and
finally to violence. The young man now turns to the woman, whom he desires, with no inhibitions and gropes at her desperately. The woman is horrified and disgusted by the man 's sexual desire, and she breaks away from him and grabs a tennis racket with which to defend herself. The young man, now thoroughly frustrated and half out of his mind with desire, grabs hold of two pieces of rope and struggles to pull two priests tied to a board, which is in turn attached to two grand pianos draped with two dead and rotting mules that are covered with excrement. This symbolizes the dead weight of the conventions of society that man must struggle against in order to become an individual. The woman escapes into the next room and slams the door on the man 's hand thus cutting him off from his desires; i.e., a symbolic castration. The woman turns from the door only to discover that she is back in her own room, and that the young man is once again fettered by the feminine frills along with the striped box and is lying dispassionately upon her bed. Bunuel now cuts to a man bounding up a flight of stairs. This man enters the room, walks directly to the young man lying on the bed and begins to berate him. He then proceeds to strip the feminine garments and the box off the young man, and he throws them all out the window. He then pulls the young man out of bed and attempts to discipline him by making him stand in a corner holding a book in each hand. We finally see the newcomer 's face and discover that it is the same face of the young man whom he has been disciplining--this obviously would symbolize the conflicting inner drives and desires of young man; e.g., the desire to conform to society and not rock the boat, as it were, or to demand that one 's individuality is more important. The young man 's doppelganger turns and heads toward the door. The books in the young man 's hands (which might symbolize learning and culture) suddenly turn into guns (a revolt against the oppressive society and its culture), and he shoots the doppelganger who falls, almost magically, out of the room and into a completely different space, a park, in which he dies. This violent and rather self-defeating action is spurred on by the young man 's frustrated and thwarted sexual desires as well as his rage against the norms that society imposes on him. Once again, we see dispassion stirred to violence. The death scene, itself, has an almost transcendent quality to it; however, this transcendent feeling is immediately undercut when several passers-by and a police officer rush over and haul the body off. The young woman now re-enters the room apparently looking for the young man, but what she finds instead is a moth on the wall, which, in a series of closer and closer shots is revealed to be a death 's head moth--symbolizing the death of any possible relationship between the young man and woman. The woman then sees the young man who, once again, is wearing his frills. The woman becomes disgusted with him and turns to leave. The woman leaves the room, and, once again, we see a magical transportation to another space, this time to a beach where there is another man who seems to have been waiting impatiently for the woman. They kiss and head off, walking along the beach. During their walk, they come upon the young man 's frills and the striped box that they pick up, laugh at, and then discard. They appear to be headed for that constantly sought after "happy ending," but as it turns out, they end up buried up to their chests in the sand; together yet separated--trapped within their own little worlds. By drawing on the many examples of symbolism which I found to be in the film, I have tried to presented a somewhat coherent reading of Un Chien Andalou, but this is in no way meant to be a definitive reading; on the contrary, there can be a completely different and equally valid reading for every viewer of the film. I was simply trying to point out that even in a film in which the director himself claims that "NOTHING in the film SYMBOLIZES ANYTHING," it is almost impossible for any viewer not to find something symbolic in the film, and thereby, render it somewhat coherent--at least for that particular viewer. This type of reading can only be carried out after multiple viewings of a film, and according to Christian Metz, this type of reading would only be secondary to the initial unconscious, or more primary response, that I felt at the immediate moment of perceiving the images as they were projected on the screen. Although Metz admits "it is I who make the film" (734), he seems to view film as a world presented to the spectator as ‘fantasy‘, ‘daydream‘, or ‘hallucination‘, that is immediately absorbed or perceived as such, and meaning and symbolism are only things that are discovered later, or when there is a break or disturbance in the flow of illusion.
In the cinema, as elsewhere, the constitution of the symbolic is only achieved through and above the play of the imaginary: projection-introjection, presence-absence, phantasies accompanying perception, etc. Even when acquired, the ego still depends in its underside on the fabulous figures thanks to which it has been acquired and which have marked it lastingly with the stamp of the lure. The secondary process does no more than "cover“... the primary process which is still constantly present and conditions the very possibility of what it covers (Metz 736-737).
Bunuel, through his use of extreme camera angles (the woman poking at the severed hand with a stick); slow motion (the death scene in the park); editing techniques which result in unreal jump cuts from interior to exterior shots (the death scene and the beach scene); multiple dissolves and extreme close shots (ants, to armpit hair, to sea urchin, to hair on a woman 's head, and the death 's head moth); and other interesting cinematic tricks (the priests, pianos, and mules which appear out of nowhere); creates a very impressive dream like—or, more appropriately, nightmare like-overall effect in his film. The sound track for the film, which Bunuel added later, consists of the Liebestod from Wagner 's Tristan and Isolde, Siegfried 's Rhine Journey, the Funeral March from Die Gotterdammerung, and assorted contemporary tangos (Cook 385 and Stauffacher 95). The soundtrack stands as a sharp counterpoint to all the violence and tension expressed through the images of the film in much the same way that the lush, romantic music of Las Hurdes stood in marked contrast to the stark and depressing images in that film. Bunuel 's use of sound in Un Chien Andalou strikes me as an excellent example of the effective use of "contrapuntal" or asynchronous sound as discussed by Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Alexandrov in their article "A Statement on Sound." In this particular film contrapuntal sound is not only justified it is demanded, for synchronous sound; e.g., dialogue--would destroy the dream or nightmare like illusion of the film. In fact, Bunuel‘s use of contrapuntal sound, has captured the precise effect that Eisentein, et alia, were calling for; i.e., "the creation of an ORCHESTRAL COUNTERPOINT of visual and aural images" (318). Un Chien Andalou, through Bunuel 's use of this surrealist dream imagery, symbolism, and the visual pun, portrays the violent clash between desire and the object of that desire and, further, between the conflicting desires of the split self. We, as viewers, come to see the "language of desire" as something which, if repressed, on the one hand, or given complete free reign, on the other, can be equally and ultimately destructive and even deadly. As Jacques Brunius puts it: “This film confronts the spectator with himself, with his own distresses, his phantasms, his obscure impulses, his unavowed desires and moral fumblings (99). I would imagine that Mulvey probably would not take (too much) exception to Brunius ' obvious sexist approach here, for according to Mulvey it is indeed this very patriarchal ideology which must be confronted, attacked, and eventually destroyed "in order to conceive a new language of desire" (Mulvey 748). However, these things, of which Brunius speaks, we must all learn to confront in order to live any kind of a meaningful life.
Works Cited
Andrew, Dudley. Concepts in Film Theory. Oxford: Oxford Press, 1984.
Aranda, Francisco. Luis Bunuel: A Critical Biography. David Robinson Trans. and Ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 1976.
Brunius, Jacques B. "Experimental Film in France." Experiment in the Film. Roger Manvell, Ed. New York: Arno Press, 1970.
Cook, David A. A History of Narrative Film. New York: W.W. Norton, 1990.
Eisentein, S. M., Pudovkin, V. I., Alexandrov, G. V. "A Statement [On Sound]." Film Theory and Criticism. Eds. Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen, and Leo Braudy. New York: Oxford Press, 1992.
Kyrou, Ado. Luis Bunuel: An Introduction. Trans. Adrienne Foulke. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963.
Lambert, Rosemary. Cambridge Introduction to the History of Art: The Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 1981.
Metz, Christian. “The Imaginary Signifier.“ Film Theory and Criticism. Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen, and Leo Braudy, Eds. New York: Oxford Press, 1992.
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." In Film Theory and Criticism. Eds. Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen, and Leo Braudy. New York: Oxford Press, 1992.
Stauffacher, Frank. (Ed.) Art in Cinema: A Symposium on the Avant-garde Film. New York: Arno Press, 1968.
According to Rosemary Lambert in the Cambridge Introduction to the History of Art: The Twentieth Century, "Surrealism was concerned with exploring and illustrating the unconscious mind" (40-41). This exploration and illustration was carried out with the use of dream imagery, symbols, puns, and with a general attitude of complete freedom of expression. The surrealists were concerned with liberating the imagination from its rational and scientific chains by making use of dreams and fantasy (41). Bunuel, himself, in his Notes on the Making of Un Chien Andalou, has the following to say about the surrealist movement and its relation to his film:
Un Chien Andalou would not have existed if …show more content…
the movement called surrealist had not existed. For its "ideology," its psychic motivation and the systematic use of the poetic image as an arm to overthrow accepted notions corresponds to the characteristics of all authentically surrealist work. This film has no intention of attracting nor pleasing the spectator; indeed, on the contrary, it attacks him, to the degree that he belongs to a society with which surrealist is at war. (Stauffacher 29 - 30).
The film, Un Chien Andalou, written, directed, and produced by Luis Bunuel with contributions from Salvadore Dali, is an excellent example of a surrealist work as attested to by Andre Breton himself (Aranta 63).
Bunuel and Dali make use of dream imagery, symbolism, and the pun in an all out attack on social convention in an attempt to force the audience to deal with the repressed and taboo subjects of sexual desire, violence and death (63-64). While, on the one hand, Bunuel admits that the film is, indeed, a surrealist work, on the other hand, he is adamant in stating that "NOTHING in the film SYMBOLIZES ANYTHING" (Stauffacher 30 [Bunuel 's emphasis]). This statement seems rather silly at best and at worst ludicrous, for at a very basic level, at least, it would seem that once something (whether animate or inanimate) is placed before a camera and filmed it immediately upon projection can become symbolic of something in some way, shape, or form. As Dudley Andrew so succinctly puts it in Concepts in Film Theory: "Cinema, as a cultural institution, is by definition a symbolic system, mediating the spectator and the world in countless exchangeable ways" (150). For example, a gun can be symbolic of death and violence, a book can be symbolic of education and culture, the color white can be symbolic of purity or innocence, and a priest is usually symbolic of religion. All of the examples mentioned above (however obvious) and more, at least possibly, are in operation in Un …show more content…
Chien Andalou irrespective of Bunuel 's denial of the use of symbolism. In fact, there is so much symbolism to be found in Un Chien Andalou, that it is quite possible to present a reading of the film which gives it at least some semblance of coherence--a coherence it might otherwise be impossible to draw from the film without the symbolism, whether implicit or explicit. In some respects, Bunuel 's Un Chien Andalou can be seen as a precursor (by more than fifty years) of some of Laura Mulvey 's sentiments in her article "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." In this article Mulvey says that "Hollywood...always managed to restrict itself to a formal mise-en-scene reflecting the dominant ideological concept of the cinema" (Mulvey 747). She goes on to call for
A cinema to be born which is radical in both a political and an aesthetic sense and challenges the basic assumptions of the mainstream film...to highlight the ways in which its formal preoccupations reflect the physical obsessions of the society which produced it, and, further, to...start specifically by reacting against those obsessions and assumptions...[and] daring to break with normal pleasurable expectations in order to conceive a new language of desire (Mulvey 747-748).
It is rather apparent that Bunuel has broken away from any type of formal mise-en-scene; moreover, Un Chien Andalou immediately strikes the viewer as a revolutionary act of sorts aimed at convention--moral, social, and cinematic. From several of Bunuel 's statements regarding Un Chien Andalou; e.g., "I don 't want the film to please you but to offend you. I would be sorry if you enjoyed it" (Aranta 64), and "When Un Chien Andalou was shown for the first time, I was prepared for a public uproar and stuffed my pockets full of stones just in case" (Kyrou 122)--it becomes clear that Bunuel 's intent is to provoke his audience not please them. Bunuel, in this film, is very much concerned with "the language of desire," and he seems to want to bring to the attention of the conscious mind the violent clash in the unconscious mind between desire and the object of that desire. In the opening sequence of the film, a man slices open a woman 's eyeball with a straight razor. The scene is shot in an extreme close-up that adds immensely to the sense of horror and shock. The razor and the eyeball are symbols, respectively, for the male and female sex organs, and their coming together as a violent clash. There is also a paradox here in that the violence of the act itself is offset by the apparent outward dispassionateness exhibited by both the man and the woman. This act seems to be performed (much like the sexual act in many cases) more out of habit or boredom than out of any real passion or desire. This scene can also be viewed as a shocking announcement to the audience that they will be seeing things from the inside out, as it were; i.e., from a completely new perspective. This opening scene also sets the tone for the further contrast of violence and dispassion throughout the film. Furthermore, it is interesting that it is the director, Bunuel himself, playing the "eye-opening" antagonist. Bunuel seems to present this violence to the viewers in order to shock them into a different mode of looking at or perceiving a film, and/or the very world in which they live. In the next sequence, we see a young man riding a bicycle down a street. The young man is dressed in a suit, and over the suit, he wears a white skirt, a frilly, white collar, and a white hat. This outfit seems to indicate a sexually ambiguous, or maybe a sexually unaware young boy. Also, attached to a cord around his neck is a striped box. The box has a sense of importance and/or mystery about it. The box, when seen in an extreme close shot, is secured with a lock. This would symbolize the young man 's sexuality, that has yet to be awakened and released (or at least of something secret). The young man, while riding along, begins to slow down and eventually falls over into the gutter. He lies there helplessly until a young woman, who has been watching him pass by from her apartment window, comes to his aid. In the next scene, the woman has laid out the young man 's feminine accouterments on her bed, possibly symbolizing the young man 's shedding of his feminine side and the awakening acknowledgment of his male side. She stares at her handiwork as if she might be a little nervous about what she may have set in motion between the man and herself. The man suddenly appears behind her staring, dumbstruck, at his hand, which is covered with ants crawling out of a hole in his palm. This symbolizes the arousal of the young man 's sexual desire, which is tinged with fear and uncertainty. In the next shot, we have a visual pun very effectively expressed through a series of dissolves in which the ants on the man 's hand materialize into the armpit hair of a woman lying on a beach. The armpit hair, in turn, is transformed into a sea urchin, and the sea urchin, in the final dissolve, becomes the hair on the head of a rather androgynous looking woman who is standing in the street poking at a severed hand with a stick. After a series of cuts from an extreme high angle view of the woman poking at the hand, to an extreme low angle view of the young man looking down from the apartment window, we learn that the young man is completely engrossed in watching the androgynous looking woman in the street from above through the other woman 's apartment window. Both of the hands in this series of dissolves; i.e., the hand crawling with ants and the severed hand--might be viewed as phallic symbols (I understand that this might be considered a bit of a stretch.) As the young man 's sexual desire (symbolized by the hand crawling with ants) is aroused, he is simultaneously struck by counter feelings of guilt and shame.
These counter feelings are symbolized by the severed hand, (fear of castration?), and the woman poking at it (the woman is dressed as a man recalling the original sexual ambiguity of the young man when we first see him riding the bicycle decked out in the feminine, white frills). The young man 's sexual desires eventually override the feelings of guilt and shame when the severed hand is placed in the striped box (out of sight out of mind). This is the very same box that the young man was wearing around his neck, indicating his powerful, sexual desires are, now, hidden and safely locked away. However, once his sexual desires have been aroused, they can no longer be safely kept hidden; in fact, they become so overpowering that trying to suppress them leads to violence. Hence, the young man watches with great excitement, and in apparent ecstasy, as the androgynous woman is run over by a car, thus completely squelching the conflicting feelings of guilt and shame--at least for the moment, for they are sure to return. We have seen the young man stirred from his original state of dispassion to a sexual awakening and
finally to violence. The young man now turns to the woman, whom he desires, with no inhibitions and gropes at her desperately. The woman is horrified and disgusted by the man 's sexual desire, and she breaks away from him and grabs a tennis racket with which to defend herself. The young man, now thoroughly frustrated and half out of his mind with desire, grabs hold of two pieces of rope and struggles to pull two priests tied to a board, which is in turn attached to two grand pianos draped with two dead and rotting mules that are covered with excrement. This symbolizes the dead weight of the conventions of society that man must struggle against in order to become an individual. The woman escapes into the next room and slams the door on the man 's hand thus cutting him off from his desires; i.e., a symbolic castration. The woman turns from the door only to discover that she is back in her own room, and that the young man is once again fettered by the feminine frills along with the striped box and is lying dispassionately upon her bed. Bunuel now cuts to a man bounding up a flight of stairs. This man enters the room, walks directly to the young man lying on the bed and begins to berate him. He then proceeds to strip the feminine garments and the box off the young man, and he throws them all out the window. He then pulls the young man out of bed and attempts to discipline him by making him stand in a corner holding a book in each hand. We finally see the newcomer 's face and discover that it is the same face of the young man whom he has been disciplining--this obviously would symbolize the conflicting inner drives and desires of young man; e.g., the desire to conform to society and not rock the boat, as it were, or to demand that one 's individuality is more important. The young man 's doppelganger turns and heads toward the door. The books in the young man 's hands (which might symbolize learning and culture) suddenly turn into guns (a revolt against the oppressive society and its culture), and he shoots the doppelganger who falls, almost magically, out of the room and into a completely different space, a park, in which he dies. This violent and rather self-defeating action is spurred on by the young man 's frustrated and thwarted sexual desires as well as his rage against the norms that society imposes on him. Once again, we see dispassion stirred to violence. The death scene, itself, has an almost transcendent quality to it; however, this transcendent feeling is immediately undercut when several passers-by and a police officer rush over and haul the body off. The young woman now re-enters the room apparently looking for the young man, but what she finds instead is a moth on the wall, which, in a series of closer and closer shots is revealed to be a death 's head moth--symbolizing the death of any possible relationship between the young man and woman. The woman then sees the young man who, once again, is wearing his frills. The woman becomes disgusted with him and turns to leave. The woman leaves the room, and, once again, we see a magical transportation to another space, this time to a beach where there is another man who seems to have been waiting impatiently for the woman. They kiss and head off, walking along the beach. During their walk, they come upon the young man 's frills and the striped box that they pick up, laugh at, and then discard. They appear to be headed for that constantly sought after "happy ending," but as it turns out, they end up buried up to their chests in the sand; together yet separated--trapped within their own little worlds. By drawing on the many examples of symbolism which I found to be in the film, I have tried to presented a somewhat coherent reading of Un Chien Andalou, but this is in no way meant to be a definitive reading; on the contrary, there can be a completely different and equally valid reading for every viewer of the film. I was simply trying to point out that even in a film in which the director himself claims that "NOTHING in the film SYMBOLIZES ANYTHING," it is almost impossible for any viewer not to find something symbolic in the film, and thereby, render it somewhat coherent--at least for that particular viewer. This type of reading can only be carried out after multiple viewings of a film, and according to Christian Metz, this type of reading would only be secondary to the initial unconscious, or more primary response, that I felt at the immediate moment of perceiving the images as they were projected on the screen. Although Metz admits "it is I who make the film" (734), he seems to view film as a world presented to the spectator as ‘fantasy‘, ‘daydream‘, or ‘hallucination‘, that is immediately absorbed or perceived as such, and meaning and symbolism are only things that are discovered later, or when there is a break or disturbance in the flow of illusion.
In the cinema, as elsewhere, the constitution of the symbolic is only achieved through and above the play of the imaginary: projection-introjection, presence-absence, phantasies accompanying perception, etc. Even when acquired, the ego still depends in its underside on the fabulous figures thanks to which it has been acquired and which have marked it lastingly with the stamp of the lure. The secondary process does no more than "cover“... the primary process which is still constantly present and conditions the very possibility of what it covers (Metz 736-737).
Bunuel, through his use of extreme camera angles (the woman poking at the severed hand with a stick); slow motion (the death scene in the park); editing techniques which result in unreal jump cuts from interior to exterior shots (the death scene and the beach scene); multiple dissolves and extreme close shots (ants, to armpit hair, to sea urchin, to hair on a woman 's head, and the death 's head moth); and other interesting cinematic tricks (the priests, pianos, and mules which appear out of nowhere); creates a very impressive dream like—or, more appropriately, nightmare like-overall effect in his film. The sound track for the film, which Bunuel added later, consists of the Liebestod from Wagner 's Tristan and Isolde, Siegfried 's Rhine Journey, the Funeral March from Die Gotterdammerung, and assorted contemporary tangos (Cook 385 and Stauffacher 95). The soundtrack stands as a sharp counterpoint to all the violence and tension expressed through the images of the film in much the same way that the lush, romantic music of Las Hurdes stood in marked contrast to the stark and depressing images in that film. Bunuel 's use of sound in Un Chien Andalou strikes me as an excellent example of the effective use of "contrapuntal" or asynchronous sound as discussed by Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Alexandrov in their article "A Statement on Sound." In this particular film contrapuntal sound is not only justified it is demanded, for synchronous sound; e.g., dialogue--would destroy the dream or nightmare like illusion of the film. In fact, Bunuel‘s use of contrapuntal sound, has captured the precise effect that Eisentein, et alia, were calling for; i.e., "the creation of an ORCHESTRAL COUNTERPOINT of visual and aural images" (318). Un Chien Andalou, through Bunuel 's use of this surrealist dream imagery, symbolism, and the visual pun, portrays the violent clash between desire and the object of that desire and, further, between the conflicting desires of the split self. We, as viewers, come to see the "language of desire" as something which, if repressed, on the one hand, or given complete free reign, on the other, can be equally and ultimately destructive and even deadly. As Jacques Brunius puts it: “This film confronts the spectator with himself, with his own distresses, his phantasms, his obscure impulses, his unavowed desires and moral fumblings (99). I would imagine that Mulvey probably would not take (too much) exception to Brunius ' obvious sexist approach here, for according to Mulvey it is indeed this very patriarchal ideology which must be confronted, attacked, and eventually destroyed "in order to conceive a new language of desire" (Mulvey 748). However, these things, of which Brunius speaks, we must all learn to confront in order to live any kind of a meaningful life.
Works Cited
Andrew, Dudley. Concepts in Film Theory. Oxford: Oxford Press, 1984.
Aranda, Francisco. Luis Bunuel: A Critical Biography. David Robinson Trans. and Ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 1976.
Brunius, Jacques B. "Experimental Film in France." Experiment in the Film. Roger Manvell, Ed. New York: Arno Press, 1970.
Cook, David A. A History of Narrative Film. New York: W.W. Norton, 1990.
Eisentein, S. M., Pudovkin, V. I., Alexandrov, G. V. "A Statement [On Sound]." Film Theory and Criticism. Eds. Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen, and Leo Braudy. New York: Oxford Press, 1992.
Kyrou, Ado. Luis Bunuel: An Introduction. Trans. Adrienne Foulke. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963.
Lambert, Rosemary. Cambridge Introduction to the History of Art: The Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 1981.
Metz, Christian. “The Imaginary Signifier.“ Film Theory and Criticism. Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen, and Leo Braudy, Eds. New York: Oxford Press, 1992.
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." In Film Theory and Criticism. Eds. Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen, and Leo Braudy. New York: Oxford Press, 1992.
Stauffacher, Frank. (Ed.) Art in Cinema: A Symposium on the Avant-garde Film. New York: Arno Press, 1968.