Luis Buñuel hated the success of ‘Un Chien Andalou’
While most of the greatest directors have produced multiple masterpieces throughout their careers, it is incredibly rare to have a perfect filmography. The incredible cinema of Luis Buñuel falls in that elusive latter category, consisting of immortal works of art such as The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Through his films, Buñuel translated the incomprehensible language of dreams to the cinematic medium and created a new form of surreal cinema.
Almost each and every one of Buñuel’s cinematic experiments is fascinating in its own way, but the film that set the ball rolling was the 1929 short Un Chien Andalou. Buñuel’s first film, made in collaboration with none other than the great Salvador Dalí, was unlike anything that contemporary audiences had seen before. Devoid of any conventional narrative, Un Chien Andalou uses images to assault the psychosphere of the audience.
Ranging from Pablo Picasso to Jean Cocteau, some of the most prominent figures in the European art world attended the premiere of Un Chien Andalou. Both Dalí and Buñuel thought audiences would react violently to the film, expecting a rejection of their highly original cinematic language. In fact, Dalí actually claimed to have carried stones to the premiere, and he was prepared to throw them at angry audience members, but nothing of that sort happened at all.
According to Buñuel, Un Chien Andalou was supposed to be a scathing satire of the intellectual bourgeoisie’s infinite hypocrisies and their stinking decadence. While talking about the political commentary, the filmmaker explained: “Historically, this film represents a violent reaction against what at that time was called ‘avant-garde cine,’ which was directed exclusively to the artistic sensibility and to the reason of the spectator.”
Ironically, it was the French intellectual bourgeoisie who enjoyed Un Chien Andalou and welcomed it with open arms. Buñuel was exasperated by the reaction, labelling European audiences as “imbeciles”. He said: “What can I do about the people who adore all that is new, even when it goes against their deepest convictions, or about the insincere, corrupt press, and the inane herd that saw beauty or poetry in something which was basically no more than a desperate, impassioned call for murder?”
Dalí was equally bemused by the unexpected success of Un Chien Andalou, insisting that the audience “has not grasped the film’s moral significance which with unmitigated violence and cruelty is directed against the audience itself” (via Hasta). That’s one of the reasons why they made their 1930 masterpiece L’Age d’Or which actually managed to piss audiences off, resulting in acts of violence and public disruptions.
Watch the film below.