Un Chien Andalou Essay
“Our only rule was very simple: No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.” Luis Buñel had this to say about his first film, Un Chien Andalou (1929), made during the heart of the surrealist period. It was a film that toyed with the corruption of reality, time, and symbolism (Turvey, 2011). There are various marks though out the film that Buñel acts out, including the slicing of an eye, the reveal of ants crawling out of the palm, the mother’s armpit and the hint of the moth. Upon repeat viewings, one begins to see that this entire film represents a dream in the mind of real-life, modern-day Oedipus (Stead, 2011).
The short film starts off with “once upon a time,” and a man played by Bruñel whetting his straight razor. He stares blankly at the moon, to see a thin cloud slicing across its surface. Just as the audience is seemingly spared the gruesomeness of the actual event by this visual metaphor, the razor slices the eye in close-up, spilling its jelly-like contents. The emblematic …show more content…
reference to Oedipus when Apollo gives him the strength to carve his own eyes out of their sockets, to be able to see the unconscious and beyond what is in his direct vision.
As clarified in Stead’s, “Un Chien Andalou – Kill your Symbols,” the following inter-title, “Eight years later,” shows the out of control nature of time within the dream (2011). The audience is introduced to an overgrown child in a man’s body, riding his bicycle down the street with a striped box tied around his neck, which provides evidence to the audience of the child within. When he falls off his bike, dropping his striped box, the innocence of his childhood is symbolically lost. His mother runs to his aid and brings his upstairs, where she lays out his schools clothes and the box. She sits looking at them reminiscing about her son as an innocent child but it is destroyed when she sees her son in the corner, staring at his hand. A close up shot of his hand reveals ants crawling out of his palm signify that she has caught her son masturbating.
The mother’s armpit represented as her pubis, has the protagonist developing a sexual fixation.
Freud introduces the Oedipal Complex, or the Oedipus drama in his works. Little boys undergo such excitement and seek love for their mothers, alluding to Oedipus. Since he perceives that his mother already has his father, he desires to kill his father and obtain sexual relations with his own mother. Buñel then cross-cuts to a hand lying in the street, representing the protagonist’s hand, which is the source of his masturbatory shame. When he beings to sexually assault his mother, she resists at first, then gradually gives in, showing the aggressive-submissive nature of human sexual relationships in general. “As his eyes roll back in his head, symbolizing both the blindness aspect of the Oedipal myth and the more modern myth that masturbation causes blindness” (Stead, 2011). The opening scene of the eye slicing foreshadows to
this. When the father bursts in, he begins scolding the child. He throws the contents of the striped box out the window, lobbing away the innocence of the protagonist. With the inter-title “Sixteen years before,” and no chance of the scene, the audience realizes the protagonist is unwillingly forced into manhood. By sleeping with his mother, he has symbolically become his father. Immediately following this the protagonist shoots his father, collapsing against the back of a nude woman. “This woman represents the wife he has lost to his own son, his dying realization” (Stead, 2011). According to Stead, “when the protagonist’s mother seduces the young man on the beach, we see the transformation already hinted at by the moth: because of her sexual encounter with her song, she know sees a surrogate protagonist, this youth seems both shy and aggressive, as seen by his reticent manner when she first approaches him” (2011). The final vestiges of the protagonist’s innocence are gone when the protagonist throws them into the sea. Buñel symbolically references Oedipus through out his film, Un Chien Andalou, with the affair of a child and his mother. From the slicing of an eye, the reveal of ants crawling out of the palm, the mother’s armpit and the hint of the moth, the entire film represents a dream in the mind of real life.
Works Cited
Stead, Ezra. "Un Chien Andalou - Kill Your Symbols | Movies I Didn 't Get | Movies I Didn 't Get." Movies I Didnt Get. Symbiotic Loop Media LLC, 2011. Web. 03 June 2014.
Turvey, Malcolm. The Filming of Modern Life: European Avant-Garde Film of the 1920s. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2011.
The short film starts off with “once upon a time,” and a man played by Bruñel whetting his straight razor. He stares blankly at the moon, to see a thin cloud slicing across its surface. Just as the audience is seemingly spared the gruesomeness of the actual event by this visual metaphor, the razor slices the eye in close-up, spilling its jelly-like contents. The emblematic …show more content…
reference to Oedipus when Apollo gives him the strength to carve his own eyes out of their sockets, to be able to see the unconscious and beyond what is in his direct vision.
As clarified in Stead’s, “Un Chien Andalou – Kill your Symbols,” the following inter-title, “Eight years later,” shows the out of control nature of time within the dream (2011). The audience is introduced to an overgrown child in a man’s body, riding his bicycle down the street with a striped box tied around his neck, which provides evidence to the audience of the child within. When he falls off his bike, dropping his striped box, the innocence of his childhood is symbolically lost. His mother runs to his aid and brings his upstairs, where she lays out his schools clothes and the box. She sits looking at them reminiscing about her son as an innocent child but it is destroyed when she sees her son in the corner, staring at his hand. A close up shot of his hand reveals ants crawling out of his palm signify that she has caught her son masturbating.
The mother’s armpit represented as her pubis, has the protagonist developing a sexual fixation.
Freud introduces the Oedipal Complex, or the Oedipus drama in his works. Little boys undergo such excitement and seek love for their mothers, alluding to Oedipus. Since he perceives that his mother already has his father, he desires to kill his father and obtain sexual relations with his own mother. Buñel then cross-cuts to a hand lying in the street, representing the protagonist’s hand, which is the source of his masturbatory shame. When he beings to sexually assault his mother, she resists at first, then gradually gives in, showing the aggressive-submissive nature of human sexual relationships in general. “As his eyes roll back in his head, symbolizing both the blindness aspect of the Oedipal myth and the more modern myth that masturbation causes blindness” (Stead, 2011). The opening scene of the eye slicing foreshadows to
this. When the father bursts in, he begins scolding the child. He throws the contents of the striped box out the window, lobbing away the innocence of the protagonist. With the inter-title “Sixteen years before,” and no chance of the scene, the audience realizes the protagonist is unwillingly forced into manhood. By sleeping with his mother, he has symbolically become his father. Immediately following this the protagonist shoots his father, collapsing against the back of a nude woman. “This woman represents the wife he has lost to his own son, his dying realization” (Stead, 2011). According to Stead, “when the protagonist’s mother seduces the young man on the beach, we see the transformation already hinted at by the moth: because of her sexual encounter with her song, she know sees a surrogate protagonist, this youth seems both shy and aggressive, as seen by his reticent manner when she first approaches him” (2011). The final vestiges of the protagonist’s innocence are gone when the protagonist throws them into the sea. Buñel symbolically references Oedipus through out his film, Un Chien Andalou, with the affair of a child and his mother. From the slicing of an eye, the reveal of ants crawling out of the palm, the mother’s armpit and the hint of the moth, the entire film represents a dream in the mind of real life.
Works Cited
Stead, Ezra. "Un Chien Andalou - Kill Your Symbols | Movies I Didn 't Get | Movies I Didn 't Get." Movies I Didnt Get. Symbiotic Loop Media LLC, 2011. Web. 03 June 2014.
Turvey, Malcolm. The Filming of Modern Life: European Avant-Garde Film of the 1920s. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2011.