Preparing for a course on Spanish film

Un Chien Andalou by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali (1928)

The course outline for my second semester film studies course (Spanish language film) arrived in my university account inbox this morning. I've been waiting for it (not entirely patiently) so I can try to get ahead of the viewing schedule. I've seen only three of the thirteen movies on the screening list previously so that's good for me in that I'll be watching films I've not seen before. On the other hand I'll be viewing most of the works for the first time so I shall need to ensure I see each at least twice if I'm going to get into them adequately. There are, I accept, more onerous tasks in life.

I was not surprised that our screenings begin with Luis Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou. That's one of my three. I watched it again this afternoon (It's under twenty minutes in running time). The opening scene with the eye remains as confronting now as it was when I first watched - I don't know how long ago. Once again, I closed my eyes because it's too difficult to look at. Modern day gore and guts and comic book violence have little effect on me. The willing suspense of disbelief seldom kicks in when shock-horror violence of absurd unreality and computer-generated fakery fills the screen. But I can't follow that open razor across the character's eye, even though I know the scene was filmed using the eye of a dead calf. I've no doubt the impulse to turn away, to not look is exactly what the film-makers were after. Nevertheless it's impressive that almost ninety years later, knowing what's coming, and knowing how the shot was constructed it still retains its power to shock; I still can't look.

The film is, of course, surrealist bonkers. One would expect nothing less of a project in which Salvador Dali participated. (I did not know he plays one of the priests being hauled across the bedroom floor. I think I did know, however, that it's Bunuel himself who wields the open razor). I laughed when I read that Dali thought the film had failed his co-author intentions at its first showing. No fight broke out among the audience, which reads like a who's who of the Parisian avant garde. Freud and psychoanalysis must have seemed so revolutionary in the mid-twenties. The film-makers must have felt they were pushing the boundaries of the still-new medium of film and the barely developed idea of spectatorship. Maybe they were.

I wonder what they would make of today's voyeuristic, reality-show culture? Dali might have loved its frivolous excess of attention-seeking performance (although he may also have despaired at the dearth of technical skill, irony and intellect to underpin it). Bunuel might have thought his worst nightmares were being realised. I shall see if the course sheds any light on those, not entirely idle speculations.