Luis Brunel, was a Spanish director who was a founding pioneer in the surrealist sector of the Avant Garde movement. His filming style was iconic to surrelist imagery and is considered one of the greatest directors to work in cinema'. (1)
Brunel first and most notable short film is Un Chien Andalou (1928). The film was a collobration of Brunel and Dali (a surrestlist artisit). The project was described as "an encounter between two dreams"(2).
The film explores themes of dreams, and has no clear structure or plot. Brunel stated 'the only rule for the writing of the script was that "no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted."(3) This was the essence of surrealist films summed up.
Un Chien Andalou, no narrative plot formation was an example of Brunel allowing the audience to escape from the confines of film. Throughout the film, it forces the audience to think about what they are watching.
The film features shocking imagery, especially within the opening scenes of which Brunuel is shown holding open a woman eye on a balcony, about to slice it open with a razor. The scene is cut between images of a cloud passing a full moon as if going to bisect it. I feel the idea of the eye slicing scene was to shock the audience through allowing them to question what film is and I feel Brunel wanted to challenge the notions of what it is to view a film.
There is a scene of ants crawling out of a man's hand. In the film there is constant correlation to humans and nature. I feel humans are very much shown connected to insects through they're mannerism or actions. There is a bird's eye view shot of people, which is reminiscent of ant. They scurry away, leaving only one woman, who eventually get run over by a car, which may represent a predator.
The film is based on the concept of suppressed human emotions, which throughout the film is exagerated to answer the question of 'what it is to be human?'.
Overall I feel the film provided a foundation for the development of surrealist cinema. It is a fundemental exmaples of showing what it is to be experimental with film.
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| Simone Mareuil's eye being held open by Luis Buñuel in the opening scene.(4) |
L'age d'Or (1930), followed Un Chien Andalou and was Salvador Dali and Luis Brunel second collobration. The film explores religion and showcases controversial imagery and symbolisms. A noteable scene within the film and the main plot is a man and woman passionately in love in a garden. The pair are often interupted by digectic noise then the scene is cut to an orchestra playing.
The film is a rebellious stance to the oppression of 1930's society. The young girl fallacting a religious statue toe caused a roit and was banned after the Board of Censors reviewed the film.
Conclusion.
Lusi Brunuel approach to film was unorthodox, he tackled various issues with ideolisms of what film is. He openly critical of middle class morals, often questioning the Roman Catholic Church. This led to many disputes with collegue Dali, who was highly religious.
Examples of films were: Un Chien Andalou; which include priests and tablets of The Ten Commandments.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Bu%C3%B1uel
Luis Buñuel stands with Eisenstein, Chaplin, Renoir, Dovzhenko, Mizoguchi and Fellini as 'one of the greatest directors ever to work in cinema'. -- Joan Mellen
2. Luis Buñuel in his autobiography, My Last Breath, Jonathan Cape, London, 1983, p.103
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un_chien_andalou.
4. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ee/Andalou.jpg
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