- Before seeing Un Chien Andalou, I was familiar only with its famous eye-slicing shot and reputation as an avante-garde film made jointly by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. As a result, I expected that watching it would be a visually striking and intensely surreal film experience. Imagine my surprise, then, when it turned out to be a little less revolutionary than its reputation and pedigree suggested.
- The film is surreal, to be sure, but not much more so than what Georges Méliès had been doing twenty-five years earlier. Aside from the eye-slicing, it's also not nearly as creative or thought-provoking as most of Dalí's other work, including his later film collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock in the dream sequence from Spellbound. Honestly, even lighthearted fare like Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. did more with clever matched cuts than this film. Since Un Chien Andalou is a short film without any real plot or a narrative, there's not much left to recommend it except for its short duration.
