Great Film overall

Absolutely the worst movie.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

I just simply don't like these surreal movies. They make no sense, they offer no atmosphere. They are barely interesting and do not entertain. I think that I should stick to films with a story and where stuff happens rather than films that show you art and nothing else. If they didn't have the razor blade in the eye I would never have wasted my time.

There are some films whose cultural and cinematographic value is much more related to the people involved in it than to their quality or interest as "story told". This movie is one of them. Its so repulsive and incomprehensible that only Buñuel and Dalí would be able to make it worthy of some appreciation. It often recalls some 1970s trash films, and short films made by pseudo-intellectuals, which still pollute the route of European film festivals. Thus, this film is very difficult to swallow, even by confessed connoisseurs of surrealism. Having no plot, it consists of a succession of images, often graphically provocative, highly inadvisable to sensitive people. Just that. Personally, I often compare Buñuel to Edd Wood, but maybe the latter can be even better that the Spanish director, in the sense that he, at least, managed to make some funny films.

"Un chien andalou" is one of the early movies, that is hard to grasp since it serves more as an expression of art than it really tells an organized story. Some of the reviewers here praise it especially for breaking social boundaries and taboos and indeed I guess that a lot of its value, apart from the prominent producers, originates from this fact.In a time when social boundaries were still a lot tighter than they are today it takes some bravery to release a movie like this one. Unfortunately, going beyond taboos doesn't guarantee an excellent movie though. I guess like with most art, the reception of this movie, apart from its historical value, is highly personal and depends largely on your taste. Personally, I liked some of the elements and depictions, but I find it rather difficult when a film provides so little structured plot.All in all you have to give the producers some credit for fighting for a more liberal art that isn't bound by social pressure. But that doesn't mean you have to blindly celebrate this movie. Not everyone that doesn't break out into celebration after watching it wants to be hip, some just simply didn't like it that much. That's art.

This strange little pioneering Surrealist film from 1929 has an overflowing handful of interesting images, and is also quite boring. But I also think it's an early example of societal decay being re-packaged as "groundbreaking." Just look at the images they use. There is an androgynous woman being protected by the police while she puts a severed hand into a box. Then there's a guy dressed up as a nun riding a bike, with the same box. There is a softcore porn scene, extreme violence in close-up, and a man's mouth morphing into a woman's muff.These are provocative images that mess with facets of human sexuality and the urge for violence that really should be left alone. Men aren't women, and women aren't men, 99% of the time. Period. You mess with people's identities, and this includes gender, then you get serious mental illness.I happen to believe that this was a film deeply informed by an understanding of human psychology, and how to manipulate it. Yes there are taboos in culture, but they are there for a reason -- if everyone is a mental patient, then the world becomes an asylum. Which most old-timers agree we have now.Funny, I read Bunuel was also vehemently anti-religion. Huh. Doesn't like absolute morality. I bet he doesn't, people are easier to exploit that way.