Un Chien Andalou (Blog post 1)

Un Chien Andalou is a surrealist film which seems to have no real plot in the traditional sense. Although there is some narrative going on, the chronology is all over the place, jumping from scene to scene, creating a disjointed story line. For example, early in the film there is a scene of a woman’s eye being cut open with a razor (actually a dead calf’s eye), which then jumps to a title card that says “eight years later”, followed by a man dressed in parts of a nun’s uniform riding a bicycle down the street. 

           
 This jumping around from seemingly unrelated scenes is one of the major ways Un Chien Andalou deviates from classical narrative film form. The rest of the film concentrates on these two major characters. There is a strange moment when the two characters are looking at young man’s hand and the camera gets close up on it and ants begin to crawl out of it. The film then transitions to a woman lying on a beach by first focusing on the arm pit hair of the young lady.

 The title cards, as well as the absurd, surreal story line, emphasize the films divergence from classical narrative film form. The title cards jump from “around three in the morning” to “six years ago” and finally ending with “In spring” where you see the couple on the beach buried in the sand up to their elbows.