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Surrealism In Un Chien Andalou

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Introduction: My essay will examine Surrealism and how it influences early and modern film. Surrealism is a cultural movement that originated in the early 1920s. André Breton expressed Surrealism as "psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express - verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner - the actual functioning of thought." Surrealism is founded by Andre Breton in 1924 and was a primarily European movement that fascinated many members of the Dada movement and they moved to the surrealism group. The aim was to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality" to capture the dreams and reality. Artists would paint strange and unrealistic scenes from everyday objects and developed …show more content…

Director Luis Buñuel presents stark, surrealistic images including the slitting open of a woman's eye and a dead horse being pulled along on top of a piano. A mysterious film open to interpretations ranging from deep to it all meaning absolutely nothing. It is certain that this short (17 minute) film presented something new in the cinema of its day. Written by garykmcd (Taking from IMDB.com) Un Chien Andalou is a silent surrealist short film released in 1929 shown at Studio des Ursulines in Paris. The film was made by director Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. It was Bunuels first film and was only to be shown for a limited time but go hugely famous and popular it was on screen for eight months. The film supposedly goes through a few years but characters pretty much stay the same, using the words ‘dream logic’ to describe how the scenes are. Which are short scenes constantly changing to different extracts of the environment the actors/actress’ are in. The first scene of Un Chien Andalou is a man sharpening his razor that is used to shave with while smoking. After sharpening the razor he slightly rubs it off the top of his thumb to check if it’s sharpened. He walks out to the balcony that lied in front of him and is watching the dark night as the moon lights up the

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