Surrealist artist were painting the unconscious mind, which resulted in non realistic art. These works are characterized by impossible scenes, illogical placement, and juxtaposed order. Artist like Dali experimented with free association and interpretation of dreams. During this time the human psyche was being explored by Sigmund Freud and his contemporaries, presenting the human mind in a way that had not previously been considered. The theory that is being sampled in Un Chien Andalou is the Oedipus concept.

So what is this Oedipus concept? Basically it has to do with the way children mentally and emotionally desire their parents, but more specifically how they think about the parent of the opposite sex. In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the child’s identification with its same-sex parent is the successful resolution of the Oedipus complex. Freud further proposed that boys and girls experience the complexes differently: boys in a form of castration anxiety, girls in a form of penis envy; and that unsuccessful resolution of the complexes might lead to neurosis, pedophilia, and homosexuality. In adult life this can lead to a choice of a sexual partner who resembles one’s parents (Rycroft), taking the theory that we are attracted to people who remind us of our parents one step further.

The Film Un Chien Andalou was created in a dreamlike state were time and space are not to be trusted, neither have any relevance in the story. This undependable usage of time and space is disorienting to the viewer and shattering any expectations they might have. Its premise came from an encounter of two dreams that occurred separately to its creators. Luis Buñuel dreamed of a long tapering cloud slicing the moon in half, like a razor blade slicing through an eye, while Salvador Dali dreamed of a hand crawling with ants. Between the two of them, they agreed that no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted. They had to open all doors to the irrational and keep only those images that surprised them, without having to explain why (Buñuel). There are many interviews and retelling of stories from these two artist, that support the idea that this film did not have a hidden meaning or symbolic purpose, but our rational minds tell us otherwise.

To gently guide you into understanding the antics of these artist, lets take a step back and look at Dali’s  The Great Masturbator, he is bringing desire into this painting, which was a major aspect of surrealistic art because they are obsessed with Freudian concepts and with Freud everything is driven from desire. This painting contains various meanings of paranoia and delusion using a method that he calls paranoiac-critical method. This method means that he is assuming the mind of a mad man, however, he is not subject to paranoia, but he is trying to use delusion as an artistic mode of vision. The aspect of paranoia that Dali is interested in and which helped inspire his so called method was the ability of the brain to perceive links between things which rationally are not linked. He describes the paranoiac critical method as a spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena. By definition this method is averting the rational binary opposition between right and wrong. The representation of an object is also the representation of an entirely different object that accommodates the consciousness of obsessive ideas of the individual. By exploiting theme of masturbation and its intended guilt; Dali is also expressing castration anxiety, as exemplified in the oedipal concept, as always leading us back to Freud.

The theme of masturbation is a part of a dream narrative where there is a strange rock profile that appears to be Salvador Dali’s own head, as if it were a self portrait, the eyes of the figure are closed suggesting that he is sleeping. Growing from the back of his head is the head of a woman who is shown nuzzling a flaccid penis and testicles, suggesting that this is a dirty dream but also a fear of impotence. There are ants crawling from a decaying body of a grasshopper, some of these ants are scurrying across where the mouth is supposed to be. The grasshopper signifies a kind of childhood trauma, but it is also being eaten suggesting how a praying mantis eats its lover after copulation. The woman has been suggested to be his wife or resembling his mother reenacting the consequences of an unsuccessful resolution of the oedipal concept.

Buñuel asked his mother for funds to film the Un Chien Andalou, not trusting production companies to capture the intended purity of emotions. With that money he hired Pierre Batcheff and Simone Mareuil as well as cameramen, and made a deal to use Billancourt studios. It only took two weeks to film and for the most part no one knew what they were doing, Dali could most often be found pouring wax into the eyes of stuffed donkeys. Once the film was edited, it was decided to keep it a secret, until a later decision was made to show it to fellow surrealist including Man Ray. Buñuel has been quoted as saying that he carried stones in his pocket, to throw at the audience in case of disaster. Luckily for him it was a success and Mauclaire of studio 28 bought the film (Buñuel). After the deal was made he was then faced with a serious moral problem that explains the surrealist morality. Initially it was whole heartedly accepted, but when the members of the surrealist group heard about him selling the film they accused him of selling out, and asked him to destroy the film in order to stop its publication.

The movie begins with “Once upon a time…” which is a statement that has a deep connection with childhood, followed by the opening scene where the viewer is greeted with a reference to a dream Buñuel had; the father slicing the mother’s eye, similar to how the clouds dissected the moon outside the balcony door, in order to extract the truth regarding the relationship between her and her son. Following this scene the story unfolds by showing an over grown child riding up the street with his hands on his thighs and covered in white frills, when he falls off the bike, symbolically showing the loss of his childhood innocence, and his mothers frantic run to his aid.

The young man’s mother laid out the contents of the striped box onto the bed, which consisted of his childhood school clothes. She sits in a chair by the bed as if to reminisce about her son as an innocent child, when something disturbs her, causing her to turn in the chair and to see her son standing in the corner of the room masturbating. Knowing that he has been caught he holds his hands up and they are covered in ants, which comes from a dream that Dali had as well as being one of his favorite metaphors.

The next scene toys with the idea of his unsuccessful resolution of the oedipal complex and how it could lead to homosexuality. As the mother and son look out the window at the commotion coming from the street, where there is an androgynous woman poking at a dismembered hand on the sidewalk. The dismembered hand symbolizes masturbatory shame, while the androgynous woman symbolizes the first thoughts of bisexuality in the young man’s developing interest in sex. A police officer places the hand in a stripped box and hands it to the woman, symbolizing his acceptance of the thought of bisexuality. As the mother and son continue to watch the scene unfold, he becomes excited by the impending violence of cars heading towards the woman, and then again when they hit her, symbolizing his dismissal of those thoughts.

At the close of this scene he sexually assaults his mother, by caressing her breast and while doing so he visualizes buttocks, and his eyes roll back into his head. The oedipal complex states that masturbation causes blindness, and perhaps this is what this scene is referring to. However, Aron says that in order to defy even desire, the body suppresses its sensuality by prescribing a slobbering, impotent mask with sorrowful upturned eyes for the lover who caresses naked breasts and buttocks. Shared desire for freedom rears up against the powers of their prison. A freedom that seems all the more complete as it obliterates its limits, a freedom that is quickly achieved in that space of our fantasy where all laws slacken, but freedom without vengeance, without real joy, without possession (Aron). As if awakening from this fantasy the son begins to crawl across the room to his mother, straining against Christian morals and the beliefs of classic civilization to reach her. The explanation behind this reasoning is that as he crawls across the floor he drags behind him two  clergymen and two grand pianos each with a carcass of a donkey on it, with the pianos referring to classical civilization and the clergymen being a metaphor of religion. He has physically become burdened with Christian morality and the beliefs of classic civilization.

If the audience was not already uncomfortably shifting in their seats, in walks the father, oblivious to the scene laid out before him. The father begins destroying the last of the boy’s childhood, by throwing the box and its contents out the window, unwillingly forcing him into manhood. At this point there is no doubt the boy and the father is one in the same person, by sleeping with his mother he has symbolically become his father. Receiving the book and pen being handed to him by his father, the son makes a face, remembering his aversion to the first day of school and symbolizing knowledge.

Time retreats as the son threatens his own father with a revolver, space is obliterated for the dying man so that the slow motion of agony begins within the walls of the room and ends under the trees. This is perhaps the only literal scene; it is a dreaming remembrance of the discovery of his crime. The men in this scene have not been shown before or after this (Buñuel). The son turns to his mother, covering his mouth as if to say “tell no one”, to emphasize his point, his mouth disappears, to reply his mother defiantly applies lipstick as if to say “I’ll tell who I please”. Seeing her defiance he reminds his mother of their incestuous incident, by the transplantation of her armpit hair where his mouth used to be, symbolic of cunnilingus. She is so shocked by his visual reminder of their sin that she runs out of the house, sticking her tongue out at him as she goes, in childish defiance, recalling that this is merely a dream.

This is primarily a subjective drama fashioned into a poem, but is none the less, a film of social consciousness (Vigo). Buñuel places intertitles right next to disarming, poetic, improbable characters that exceed language’s competence. Everything on which the body rests or halts everything which limits that strange body-distance, time- is dislocated in the course of this film. The only thing tying the disjointed scenes together is the striped box that appears throughout the movie. Nothing in this movie was intended to make sense; it was made to create a revolutionary shock amongst its viewers. However, it is human nature to make sense out of the things they do not understand. There are innumerous explanations of this movie, and without a version of understanding of the symbolism expressed it is hard to connect to any of the characters except the woman who, when watching for the first time with no explanation of the scenes, is seemingly being attacked by her would be rapist. However, with the symbolism of the story line being explained using the Freudian theory, the other characters become relatable as well.

Artistic film makers have a coarse knowledge of art and obey the sentimental arbitrary nature of his genius. Anti artistic film makers know nothing of art and films in a pure way, obeying only the technical necessities of his gadgets, and obeying the infantile and strikingly joyful instinct of his sporting physiology. Artistic cinema has not succeeded in determining any universal type of emotion, instead relying on the maximum expression of emotions. While anti artistic cinema has created a whole characteristic and extremely differentiated world of particular emotions and image types, clearly defined and understood by cinema goers (Dalí). Dali admires Man Ray for his attempts at creating an artistic film, leaving the viewer with a pure emotion strictly on a visual level. However, he sees anti artistic film as the more perfect film for its innate ability to create pure emotions of boredom and sadness.

To attest to the popularity of the film Un Chien Andalou, while on his Isolar tour, supporting his album Station to Station, David Bowie opened each of his shows with a projected sequence of surrealist images, one of which depicts a razor blade cutting into an eyeball. The visual element of the performances incorporated banks of fluorescent white light set against black backdrops creating a stark spectacle on a stage largely devoid of props or other visual distractions (Sandford). The staging featured Bowie, dressed in The Duke’s habitual black waistcoat and trousers, a pack of Gitanes placed ostentatiously in his pocket, moving stiffly among curtains of white light. If you have ever heard an audience groan at the opening scene, imagine an entire auditorium, most of whom were undoubtedly seeing it for the first time.