Released 1929
French
16 minutes
Silent, b&w
Directed by Luis Bunuel
Written by Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel
Starring Pierre Batcheff, Simone Mareuil
(watched via videotape)
I had a boyfriend once upon a time who had a major thing for Salvador Dali (as well as H.R. Giger). We had posters and prints of his artwork all over our apartment walls and had several books about his life and work taking up space on our shelves (Giger stuff was all over the place as well, sometimes that apartment was kind of creepy to hang out in really). I liked Dali well enough, but not to the obsessive extent that boyfriend did. Anyway, during his Dali period he read about this bizarre, controversial short film that the artist had written and he decided we ABSOLUTELY HAD TO SEE IT. It was a big freaking deal for weeks until I found a place to order the film from finally. I overpaid for it (considering it was on VHS and DVD did totally exist by that point) but it was worth it to me if that boyfriend would just shut up already.
The film is pretty strange, which is probably expected considering it was the brainchild of Salvador Dali. It starts off with someone getting their eyeball graphically cut by a razor blade (a cow eye was used but its still pretty gross) and then things get more surreal from there. There is a guy in a room and ants running around and images super imposed on other images. Basically its like watching a live action version of one of Dali's paintings. That boyfriend seemed to get some deeper understanding of the universe and human nature out of watching it (or at least he pretended he did like some pretentious dork), but at the time I just thought it was weird. Its been almost 10 years though, so I might watch it again to see if I can figure out what the heck I missed the first time.
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