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(Narrator) "Once upon a time"
reads the opening intertitle:
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Downloaded from
YTS.MX
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the inviting and reassuring
first words of bedtime stories
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00:00:07,340 --> 00:00:09,150
since the world began.
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00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000
Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX
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00:00:09,293 --> 00:00:12,826
We're led to expect the unfolding
of a straightforward story line,
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the stuff of fairy tale
and pulp fiction
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00:00:15,252 --> 00:00:17,944
that became the staple
of movie entertainment.
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00:00:18,047 --> 00:00:20,767
But that this might be
a disquieting kind of fable
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is signalled by the following shot.
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00:00:23,132 --> 00:00:26,934
This so-called prologue
is the key to the rest of the film
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00:00:27,038 --> 00:00:30,973
and the image of the slashed eye
is one of the icons of Surrealism.
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00:00:31,078 --> 00:00:35,177
It's worth looking again
at the reasons for its celebrity.
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00:00:35,286 --> 00:00:37,805
They boil down, I think, to three:
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00:00:37,913 --> 00:00:41,035
the almost unbearable impact
of the action
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00:00:41,145 --> 00:00:43,501
that produces a physical shock
which doesn't diminish,
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00:00:43,603 --> 00:00:45,250
even after many viewings.
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00:00:45,354 --> 00:00:48,007
The figural density
and poetic resonance
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00:00:48,115 --> 00:00:50,471
of the visual elements
brought into play,
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00:00:50,573 --> 00:00:53,063
together with the complex way
that they're strung together,
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00:00:53,671 --> 00:00:57,770
and the challenge the sequence
delivers to us, as spectators,
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00:00:57,879 --> 00:01:02,859
to think again about the satisfaction
we get from watching films.
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00:01:03,334 --> 00:01:05,384
It is profoundly shocking.
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00:01:05,489 --> 00:01:08,181
Nothing prepares us
for this gratuitous attack.
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The effect is exacerbated because,
unusually for the cinema,
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the woman's eye is looking directly
out at the audience, returning our gaze,
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implicating us.
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We grasp that it's also ourselves
who are the intended victims
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00:01:19,934 --> 00:01:21,744
of this visual assault.
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00:01:22,257 --> 00:01:24,546
And the tranquility
with which the action is performed
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00:01:24,647 --> 00:01:28,584
is another twist of the knife
in the spectator's unease.
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00:01:28,688 --> 00:01:31,513
Denying us shots of anticipation
or reaction,
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00:01:31,618 --> 00:01:33,773
on the part of either the aggressor
or the victim,
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00:01:34,311 --> 00:01:38,448
it's a grotesquely cruel exercise
in clinical objectivity.
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No wonder Buñuel has been dubbed
"the surgeon of the look".
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00:01:44,379 --> 00:01:47,300
Of course,
as Hitchcock famously said,
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00:01:47,409 --> 00:01:49,995
"“Cutting is the best way."
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00:01:50,103 --> 00:01:52,660
He meant it was the best way
for a murderer to do a killing
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00:01:52,763 --> 00:01:56,163
and the best way for a film director
to manipulate his audience.
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00:01:56,264 --> 00:02:00,067
Buñuel, who had just published
an essay extolling découpage
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00:02:00,170 --> 00:02:03,571
as the key to expressivity in film,
would have agreed.
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00:02:04,278 --> 00:02:09,124
It's he, the director on the screen,
who engenders the film by a cut.
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00:02:09,833 --> 00:02:12,419
Cutting is symbolically
appropriate also
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00:02:12,561 --> 00:02:15,051
because the central preoccupation
of the film
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00:02:15,154 --> 00:02:18,210
is sexual desire and sexual anxiety
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00:02:18,352 --> 00:02:22,050
including, more specifically
for the male, the fear of castration.
47
00:02:22,157 --> 00:02:26,228
Complexes about castration
also lead to fetishism.
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00:02:26,332 --> 00:02:29,694
The fetishist substitutes
as the object of his desire
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a part of the thing, a cut of it,
for the whole.
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00:02:32,999 --> 00:02:35,010
Fragmentation therefore reigns
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00:02:35,120 --> 00:02:38,348
because the film deconstructs
the sexual subject
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00:02:38,454 --> 00:02:41,413
and opens up contradictions
within desiring
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00:02:41,517 --> 00:02:45,521
in the exchange of looks,
the circulation of fetishised objects,
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00:02:45,625 --> 00:02:47,302
and body parts.
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00:02:47,410 --> 00:02:51,414
Mutilation of the text matches
mutilation of the body.
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00:02:51,518 --> 00:02:53,060
The initial act of physical violence
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is directly related to the textual
violence that will follow.
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00:02:56,434 --> 00:03:00,878
The thumbnail on which Buñuel tests
the sharpness of the stropped blade
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00:03:00,979 --> 00:03:04,073
is about the size of
a 35mm film frame.
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00:03:04,178 --> 00:03:06,831
And the razor stands in
for the guillotine
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00:03:06,939 --> 00:03:08,817
on the editing rostrum.
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00:03:08,925 --> 00:03:13,025
It's significant, perhaps, that Buñuel
disappears from his own film
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00:03:13,135 --> 00:03:16,256
having accomplished
the act of cutting.
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00:03:16,367 --> 00:03:19,355
The slicing is an effect of montage.
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00:03:19,464 --> 00:03:22,452
Of course, it's not the actress's eye
that is cut up,
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00:03:22,562 --> 00:03:24,238
but a dead calf's.
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00:03:24,347 --> 00:03:26,263
It's all down to the Kuleshov effect
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00:03:26,367 --> 00:03:28,886
and Eisenstein's
"montage of attractions",
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00:03:29,027 --> 00:03:31,948
or, in this case, of repulsions.
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00:03:32,058 --> 00:03:35,994
It's down to our conditioned reflex
to shot following shot, to the cut,
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00:03:36,098 --> 00:03:39,497
that we get conditioned to
by the first films we ever see.
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00:03:39,600 --> 00:03:41,716
What kind of relation can there be
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00:03:41,822 --> 00:03:44,782
between a cloud
passing across the moon
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and a razor slicing an eye?
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00:03:47,210 --> 00:03:51,481
It's impressive as a graphic match
and as a visual metaphor.
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00:03:51,586 --> 00:03:55,216
By and large, cinematic metaphors
are difficult to read,
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00:03:55,358 --> 00:03:58,891
draw attention to themselves
and disrupt the narrative flow.
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00:03:58,994 --> 00:04:01,886
They're found mostly in avant-garde
and experimental films.
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00:04:01,991 --> 00:04:05,085
Metonymies, in contrast,
are unobtrusive
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00:04:05,223 --> 00:04:09,159
and may well accomplish their work
without being recognised as figures at all.
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00:04:10,375 --> 00:04:15,317
Common sense reminds us
that this is just an illusory figure,
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yet, watching the film,
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we will have willed the connection
between the two.
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00:04:20,981 --> 00:04:23,940
It's as if we want the eye
to be broken.
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00:04:24,078 --> 00:04:28,312
It's our desire
that the cloud passing is a cause
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00:04:28,422 --> 00:04:31,516
and the razor slash, an effect.
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00:04:31,620 --> 00:04:35,720
And it seems that if we consciously
egg the film on towards a mutilation,
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we may at the same time have
unconsciously willed it towards a rape.
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Enough's probably been said
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00:04:40,712 --> 00:04:42,934
about the spectator's
masochistic identification
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00:04:43,069 --> 00:04:46,766
of his/her own vision
with the severed eye.
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00:04:46,874 --> 00:04:49,565
But by the sadistic side
of the same coin,
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the razor slash
is even more obviously
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the film's symbolic deflowering
of the woman.
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00:04:55,662 --> 00:04:58,650
The moon is a traditional symbol
of virginity, after all.
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The implied vagina symbolically
completes a triad
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with the moon and the eye,
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00:05:04,483 --> 00:05:07,816
just as the implied penis
completes a phallic triad
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00:05:07,918 --> 00:05:10,341
with the cloud and the razor.
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00:05:10,443 --> 00:05:12,186
So the prologue not only indicates
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the kind of spectatorial
responsiveness
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00:05:14,988 --> 00:05:18,082
that will be subsequently expected
from the audience,
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00:05:18,187 --> 00:05:21,922
it also prefigures the chains
of sexual motifs
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00:05:22,026 --> 00:05:26,939
that will recur and ramify
in the sexual obstacle race to come.
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00:05:27,042 --> 00:05:30,375
The graphic forms and patterns
deployed in this opening sequence
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will inform the rest of the film,
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00:05:32,161 --> 00:05:34,919
constantly recurring and resonating
one with another,
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00:05:35,022 --> 00:05:38,355
at the same time as they disrupt
the smooth unfolding of a story.
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00:05:39,636 --> 00:05:41,014
In regard to circular forms,
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we'll participate in a game
of echoes and repetitions,
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00:05:44,349 --> 00:05:46,868
alternately concave and convex,
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00:05:46,976 --> 00:05:50,673
that takes in the thumbnail, the moon,
the eye, the hole in the hand,
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00:05:50,780 --> 00:05:52,390
the armpit, and so on.
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00:05:52,498 --> 00:05:55,486
And we will observe a corresponding
series of linear forms
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00:05:55,596 --> 00:05:59,934
that includes the razor, the slither
of cloud, the striped box, the tie:
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00:06:00,040 --> 00:06:03,574
so many shapes standing in
for the phallus.
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00:06:03,676 --> 00:06:07,278
But what does Un Chien andalou
as a whole film mean?
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00:06:07,380 --> 00:06:09,736
It is, basically, after all,
a love story.
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00:06:09,838 --> 00:06:13,601
Ostensibly, the plot's trajectory
is the classic Hollywood and folk-tale one
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00:06:13,711 --> 00:06:15,827
of the formation of the couple,
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00:06:15,966 --> 00:06:19,663
even though that satisfying outcome
is eventually thwarted.
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00:06:20,680 --> 00:06:23,774
Yet Buñuel and Dali's way
with the story
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00:06:23,879 --> 00:06:29,195
sets up a troubling tension between
this proverbial cosy anecdotal line
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00:06:29,299 --> 00:06:34,309
and the perversely irrational content
that subverts its causal chain.
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00:06:34,418 --> 00:06:35,758
And it's with this discrepancy
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00:06:35,866 --> 00:06:39,735
that the problems interpreting
Un Chien andalou start.
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00:06:39,838 --> 00:06:42,827
Is it, after all, just a tissue
of self-indulgent nonsense,
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00:06:42,936 --> 00:06:45,120
a farrago of non sequiturs?
129
00:06:45,226 --> 00:06:47,716
Is it an exercise
in a symbolism so arcane
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00:06:47,818 --> 00:06:50,980
as to be intelligible
only to the initiated?
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00:06:51,084 --> 00:06:54,552
Or should we take Buñuel and Dali
seriously
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00:06:54,654 --> 00:06:57,613
as logicians of the unconscious?
133
00:06:58,290 --> 00:07:01,824
There are compelling reasons
for reading the film psychoanalytically
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00:07:01,961 --> 00:07:04,211
as I've already argued
vis-a-vis the prologue.
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00:07:04,856 --> 00:07:09,395
Indeed, this has always been critics'
and interpreters' preferred approach.
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00:07:09,503 --> 00:07:11,082
Faced with the film's enigmas,
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00:07:11,186 --> 00:07:13,676
they've been encouraged in this
by Buñuel himself,
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00:07:13,779 --> 00:07:15,589
who famously commented that
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00:07:15,698 --> 00:07:17,986
"the only method of investigation
of the symbols"
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00:07:18,089 --> 00:07:20,675
"would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis."
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00:07:20,816 --> 00:07:23,708
The fact that the film was
immediately qualified as surrealist
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00:07:23,812 --> 00:07:27,710
and that Surrealism itself,
since Breton's 1924 Manifesto,
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00:07:27,820 --> 00:07:30,510
had located itself on Freudian maps
of the psyche,
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00:07:30,614 --> 00:07:34,847
is further support
for a psychoanalytic reading.
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00:07:34,958 --> 00:07:38,252
Breton had long before noted
the similarities
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00:07:38,358 --> 00:07:41,625
of poetic figures
like the metaphor and analogy
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00:07:41,725 --> 00:07:44,781
to the work of condensation
and displacement
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00:07:44,891 --> 00:07:48,923
in Freud's picture
of the unconscious mental processes.
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00:07:49,032 --> 00:07:51,819
But a psychoanalytical reading
need not mean the search
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00:07:51,928 --> 00:07:54,417
for an exclusive
one-to-one equivalent
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00:07:54,554 --> 00:07:58,758
between an image in the film
and some specific psychosexual theme.
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00:07:58,864 --> 00:08:02,799
Early critics all assumed that the film
contained an allegorical master narrative
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00:08:02,904 --> 00:08:04,619
which recounted
the sexual development
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00:08:04,723 --> 00:08:06,944
of a single, hypothetical
male protagonist.
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00:08:07,046 --> 00:08:11,719
It was, they said, about adolescent
sexual development and frustration,
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00:08:11,860 --> 00:08:15,932
starting with an invocation of
the castration complex or the sexual act
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00:08:16,036 --> 00:08:19,196
and continuing
with the sexual pilgrim's progress
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00:08:19,302 --> 00:08:22,970
through phases of infantile narcissism,
mother fixation,
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00:08:23,073 --> 00:08:26,300
homosexuality
and much else besides.
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00:08:26,406 --> 00:08:30,142
Yet no two interpretations
have ever agreed on the specifics
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00:08:30,245 --> 00:08:32,735
of the psychosexual allegory.
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00:08:32,837 --> 00:08:35,692
Almost certainly this was because
they closed their eyes
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00:08:35,800 --> 00:08:40,379
to elements in the film
that didn't fit their particular decoding.
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00:08:40,481 --> 00:08:43,642
Early critics equally reductively,
if understandably,
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00:08:43,746 --> 00:08:46,668
tended to see it
as the record of a dream.
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00:08:46,777 --> 00:08:49,095
It is not a film dream, nor even,
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despite Buñuel account
of the origin of the screenplay,
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00:08:51,862 --> 00:08:55,223
the record of a series of his own
and Dali's dreams.
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00:08:55,364 --> 00:08:57,212
Un Chien andalou
is more fruitfully read
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00:08:57,316 --> 00:09:00,075
as being about the workings
of the unconscious,
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00:09:00,178 --> 00:09:03,367
than it is about the content
of any particular dream.
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00:09:03,478 --> 00:09:05,355
The unconscious is not so much
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00:09:05,465 --> 00:09:08,453
a pre-existing hidden treasure house
of symbolic content
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00:09:08,596 --> 00:09:10,339
waiting for the artist to loot.
175
00:09:10,448 --> 00:09:13,943
It is rather a psychic activity,
better viewed as a process,
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00:09:14,051 --> 00:09:18,082
by which desire and anxiety
express themselves,
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00:09:18,192 --> 00:09:19,706
not just for Buñuel and Dali,
178
00:09:19,808 --> 00:09:22,433
but for ourselves in the audience,
watching the film.
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00:09:22,569 --> 00:09:25,260
This helps explain
why this little film
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00:09:25,363 --> 00:09:29,396
has assumed so much importance
for more recent film theory.
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00:09:29,505 --> 00:09:33,001
Recent approaches have stopped asking
"What does this film mean?"
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00:09:33,108 --> 00:09:38,252
in favour of "In what position
does this film put the spectator?"
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00:09:38,361 --> 00:09:39,903
The contradictoriness
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00:09:40,010 --> 00:09:44,215
of successive rival
core-narrative readings of the film
185
00:09:44,320 --> 00:09:47,481
combined with their selective
inaccuracy and distortion
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00:09:47,586 --> 00:09:49,809
of what we actually see
on the screen,
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00:09:49,909 --> 00:09:54,650
has by and large discredited attempts
to interpret Un Chien andalou
188
00:09:54,758 --> 00:09:57,679
as either the dream
of a unified subject,
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00:09:57,789 --> 00:10:00,077
the hypothetical hero,
190
00:10:00,179 --> 00:10:03,780
or as the allegory
of the hero's sexual development.
191
00:10:03,883 --> 00:10:06,976
More recent approaches
have emphasised the ways
192
00:10:07,082 --> 00:10:11,525
in which the film opens up
possibilities of meaning.
193
00:10:11,628 --> 00:10:14,079
For the surrealists,
following Freud in this,
194
00:10:14,186 --> 00:10:17,347
the workings of desire
are primarily unconscious.
195
00:10:17,453 --> 00:10:18,659
By what means, then,
196
00:10:18,765 --> 00:10:22,232
could one hope to represent something
that was unconscious?
197
00:10:22,334 --> 00:10:24,758
Buñuel's and Dali's solution
to the problem
198
00:10:24,860 --> 00:10:28,557
was via the transgression
of more familiar discourses.
199
00:10:28,665 --> 00:10:32,830
Un Chien andalou's shocks
and disorientations are not random.
200
00:10:32,941 --> 00:10:35,566
They're predicated
on a systematic breaking of the frame
201
00:10:35,702 --> 00:10:37,310
of traditional narrative,
202
00:10:37,419 --> 00:10:40,206
and thus come across as parodies
of the conventions
203
00:10:40,314 --> 00:10:43,715
of both mainstream
and the art cinema of the time.
204
00:10:43,816 --> 00:10:47,820
In mainstream cinema, an impression
of reality or verisimilitude
205
00:10:47,924 --> 00:10:49,974
is usually assured
by apparent fidelity
206
00:10:50,079 --> 00:10:53,000
to the audience's experience
of time and space.
207
00:10:53,109 --> 00:10:55,264
The audience's belief in what is seen
208
00:10:55,399 --> 00:10:59,269
comes from spatial continuity
and the logic of cause and effect.
209
00:10:59,372 --> 00:11:02,398
It is these logics
that Un Chien andalou mocks
210
00:11:02,504 --> 00:11:04,180
and largely defies.
211
00:11:04,288 --> 00:11:08,224
In terms of the ordering of film,
it is in the cuts, the very points
212
00:11:08,328 --> 00:11:12,400
at which classic narrative montage
strives most for continuity,
213
00:11:12,504 --> 00:11:14,927
that the body of the film
is dismembered.
214
00:11:15,029 --> 00:11:18,697
The signs of narrative logic
and continuity are present:
215
00:11:18,800 --> 00:11:22,966
shot, reverse shot, alternation,
eye-line matches and so forth.
216
00:11:23,076 --> 00:11:25,365
As spectators, we therefore assume
217
00:11:25,467 --> 00:11:29,001
that a logic of causality
links the successive shots,
218
00:11:29,137 --> 00:11:32,096
because the conventional cues
are visible.
219
00:11:32,201 --> 00:11:36,981
But the mutually inconsistent images
montaged together by Buñuel and Dali
220
00:11:37,083 --> 00:11:39,536
refuse to be read as continuous.
221
00:11:39,642 --> 00:11:42,429
The time axis is repeatedly disrupted
222
00:11:42,538 --> 00:11:46,408
in ways that both poke fun
at narrative film conventions
223
00:11:46,511 --> 00:11:50,113
and enhance the spectator's sense
of temporal confusion.
224
00:11:50,215 --> 00:11:54,448
Thus, the misleading intertitle
"Sixteen years before"
225
00:11:54,592 --> 00:11:57,044
follows
"Towards three in the morning".
226
00:11:57,151 --> 00:12:00,914
Abrupt changes of setting,
achieved through montage,
227
00:12:01,023 --> 00:12:03,609
confound our sense
of the integrity of space.
228
00:12:03,716 --> 00:12:07,117
For example, there is continuity
of action across cuts
229
00:12:07,218 --> 00:12:09,000
between unrelated locations
230
00:12:09,104 --> 00:12:12,571
when the murdered double starts
his death-fall indoors
231
00:12:12,707 --> 00:12:14,584
and completes it in a park.
232
00:12:14,694 --> 00:12:18,697
The whole film is an assemblage
of incongruities.
233
00:12:18,801 --> 00:12:21,454
Likewise, at the level
of characterisation,
234
00:12:21,563 --> 00:12:25,163
there is neither psychological
nor physiological consistency.
235
00:12:25,266 --> 00:12:27,383
Batcheff plays apparently
three characters:
236
00:12:27,522 --> 00:12:30,011
the cyclist, "himself"
and "his" double.
237
00:12:30,115 --> 00:12:34,520
Characters: the razor man - Buñuel,
the androgyne and the new lover
238
00:12:34,626 --> 00:12:39,300
are inserted into and ejected from
the story with equal arbitrariness.
239
00:12:39,408 --> 00:12:43,306
Bodies endure the transfer of hair
and the erasure of a mouth.
240
00:12:43,414 --> 00:12:46,508
The normal frontiers
of the human form are blurred
241
00:12:46,613 --> 00:12:49,946
as an eye is broken
and yet miraculously restored
242
00:12:50,047 --> 00:12:53,036
and as breasts transmogrify
into buttocks.
243
00:12:53,785 --> 00:12:56,275
But even hell has its laws.
244
00:12:56,378 --> 00:13:00,687
And Un Chien andalou substitutes
alternative patterns of ordering
245
00:13:00,789 --> 00:13:03,844
for the conventional ones
that it subverts.
246
00:13:03,954 --> 00:13:06,511
In compensation, it makes
all sorts of connections,
247
00:13:06,614 --> 00:13:09,037
between the otherwise
disjointed episodes
248
00:13:09,139 --> 00:13:12,232
via its many repetitions,
pairings and doublings.
249
00:13:12,338 --> 00:13:15,125
The gouged-out eyes
of the piano-borne donkeys
250
00:13:15,234 --> 00:13:17,590
remind us of the sliced eye
of the prologue,
251
00:13:17,691 --> 00:13:19,980
just as they prefigure
the empty eye sockets
252
00:13:20,116 --> 00:13:22,806
of the half-buried lovers
in the final shot.
253
00:13:22,910 --> 00:13:24,758
Un Chien andalou
is a perpetual movement
254
00:13:24,863 --> 00:13:27,583
between opposing poles
of signification.
255
00:13:27,692 --> 00:13:31,053
Just as the prologue is ordered
on alternating figures
256
00:13:31,160 --> 00:13:33,238
based on presence and absence,
257
00:13:33,348 --> 00:13:36,815
so the film that follows is patterned
on symmetrical oppositions
258
00:13:36,917 --> 00:13:39,206
between assertion and denial:
259
00:13:39,308 --> 00:13:43,340
sight versus blindness,
regeneration versus lifelessness,
260
00:13:43,450 --> 00:13:45,460
attraction versus repulsion,
261
00:13:45,605 --> 00:13:47,586
horizontal lines
versus circular shapes
262
00:13:47,692 --> 00:13:49,234
and, dare one say it,
263
00:13:49,679 --> 00:13:51,661
male versus female.
264
00:13:51,766 --> 00:13:55,702
Instead of a regular narrative,
the unfolding of Un Chien andalou
265
00:13:55,806 --> 00:13:59,570
presents us with a succession
of repeated displacements
266
00:13:59,678 --> 00:14:01,862
of the same structures of desire:
267
00:14:02,002 --> 00:14:04,923
the eternal return
of Freud's repressed.
268
00:14:05,032 --> 00:14:08,863
But these repetitions-with-difference
do not overwhelm the text
269
00:14:08,971 --> 00:14:12,238
in such a way as to sabotage altogether
the movement of a narrative.
270
00:14:12,339 --> 00:14:16,236
The lineaments of characterisation
and time reference that a story needs
271
00:14:16,346 --> 00:14:19,104
are present at least
in tantalising filigree.
272
00:14:19,208 --> 00:14:20,682
And if the characters have no names
273
00:14:20,790 --> 00:14:23,414
and next to no anchorage
in everyday reality,
274
00:14:23,518 --> 00:14:24,762
they do have goals.
275
00:14:24,864 --> 00:14:27,689
It is on account
of this persistence of story
276
00:14:27,794 --> 00:14:30,915
that Surrealism is probably
the only avant-garde
277
00:14:31,026 --> 00:14:33,881
within the parameters
of narrative cinema.
278
00:14:33,989 --> 00:14:37,590
And it's their residual story lines
that almost certainly help account
279
00:14:37,693 --> 00:14:42,070
for surrealist films' lasting popularity
over the other avant-gardes.
280
00:14:42,171 --> 00:14:46,376
We've seen how psychoanalysis
gives privileged access
281
00:14:46,481 --> 00:14:47,725
to Un Chien andalou.
282
00:14:47,828 --> 00:14:52,205
But this doesn't mean that Freud
is spared the same subversive treatment.
283
00:14:52,306 --> 00:14:55,667
The very literalness
of the Freudian tropes in the film
284
00:14:55,774 --> 00:15:00,381
points to the knowing irony
of their enlistment by Buñuel and Dali.
285
00:15:00,488 --> 00:15:05,095
Un Chien andalou is a play not only
of the Freudian paradigm but with it.
286
00:15:05,201 --> 00:15:08,496
After all, the surrealists had never
gone the whole way with Freud.
287
00:15:08,636 --> 00:15:11,356
They had major reservations
about the therapist Freud.
288
00:15:11,464 --> 00:15:14,452
They distanced themselves
from the conservative moralist
289
00:15:14,562 --> 00:15:17,924
who was prepared to pay
too high a price in discontents
290
00:15:18,030 --> 00:15:20,453
for the rewards of civilisation.
291
00:15:20,555 --> 00:15:24,454
Many early viewers took
Un Chien andalou very seriously indeed.
292
00:15:24,562 --> 00:15:28,058
Cyril Connolly, "Palinurus",
saw it as a sort of unholy rite
293
00:15:28,165 --> 00:15:30,521
and recalls leaving a Paris screening
294
00:15:30,623 --> 00:15:34,492
"with the impression of having witnessed
some infinitely ancient horror."
295
00:15:34,596 --> 00:15:37,421
But to dwell exclusively
on the terroristic violence,
296
00:15:37,525 --> 00:15:40,010
is to miss the humour, however dark,
that pervades the film.
297
00:15:40,017 --> 00:15:41,798
But the film's ironic perspective
298
00:15:41,903 --> 00:15:46,069
puts a certain saving distance
between us and the cruelties
299
00:15:46,179 --> 00:15:49,474
that helps us turn them
into objects of contemplation
300
00:15:49,579 --> 00:15:50,853
and even of pleasure.
301
00:15:50,960 --> 00:15:53,986
This is where the surrealists'
favourite oxymoronic agent,
302
00:15:54,091 --> 00:15:56,610
black humour,
comes into operation.
303
00:15:56,718 --> 00:15:58,901
Black humour converts a pain
304
00:15:59,008 --> 00:16:03,107
that accident and necessity
inflict on the self into pleasure
305
00:16:03,216 --> 00:16:05,974
and thus brings about
a kind of liberation.
306
00:16:06,112 --> 00:16:09,033
It's a kind of intellectual victory
over circumstance,
307
00:16:09,143 --> 00:16:13,174
the last redoubt of the vanquished
but unbowed.
308
00:16:13,283 --> 00:16:18,130
Un Chien andalou is indeed a story
of defeated passion,
309
00:16:18,233 --> 00:16:21,423
but done in such an exhilarating way
310
00:16:21,533 --> 00:16:24,760
that defeat is turned
into a kind of victory.
26070
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