Un Chien Andalou French Film Guide

by Adamowicz, Elza

• ISBN13: 9781848850569
• ISBN10: 1848850565
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-02-15
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris

Summary

In 1929 Dali and Bunuel produced a seventeen-minute filmUn chien andalou. On its first screening, Georges Bataille referred to it as "that extraordinary film ... penetrating so deeply into horror." Its script is said to be based on two dream images - a woman's eye slit by a razor, ants emerging from a hole in a man's hand, and the film shocked audiences. It continues to fascinate, provoke, attract and alienate its viewers - and to influence filmmakers.Elza Adamowicz's lucid critical guide to this most enigmatic of works takes new approaches to the film. It reviews, for example, its openness to so many readings and interpretations; it reassesses Dali and Bunuel's account of the film as a model surrealist work and its reception by the surrealist group, and examines both the unresolved tensions within the film itself and the role of the viewer, as detective or dreamer?

Author Biography

Elza Adamowicz is Professor of French and Visual Culture, Queen Mary, University of London. Her publications include Dissecting the Exquisite Corpse (1998) and Surrealism: Crossings/Frontiers (2006).

Table of Contents

* Contents * Illustrations * Synopsis * Introduction: It’s dangerous to look inside * Producing Un chien andalou: myths of origin * From scenario to screen: a close collaboration * Première and reception of Un chien andalou * A surrealist film? * Romantic melodrama or magic theatre? * Classic film narrative subverted * A cinema of attractions * Psychoanalytical readings * Symbols or material images? * Contexts and intertexts: between Fantômas and the fairground * Spanish contexts * Surrealist iconography * A parody of 1920s films * Early cinema and fairground intertexts * 1920s social context: destabilizing gender roles * Conclusion * Credits * Bibliography *