How to Offend High Society with Dead Donkeys, Crawling Ants, and a Razor-Sharp Moon
It’s 3:15 AM. My eyes feel like they’ve been rubbed with coarse sandpaper, the cold pizza on my desk is starting to look back at me, and I am currently watching a man drag two grand pianos containing rotting donkey carcasses and two live priests across a bedroom, while ants crawl out of a hole in a man’s palm.
Welcome, my friends, to the completely illogical, deeply Freudian, and delightfully offensive world of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí.
If you’ve never heard of Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog), congratulations: your brain is still wired to expect things like “plots,” “characters,” and “basic human logic.” For the uninitiated, this 16-minute French silent short is the undisputed holy grail of surrealist cinema. The filmmaking method used by director Luis Buñuel and legendary painter Salvador Dalí was a masterclass in psychological warfare:
- Sit down to write a script and establish one golden, absolute rule: no idea or image that can be rationally explained in any way is allowed.
- Share your actual nightmares with each other (Buñuel dreamed of a cloud slicing the moon like a razor slicing an eye; Dalí dreamed of a hand crawling with ants) and mash them together into a chaotic sequence of dream-logic.
- Show the film to a high-society Parisian crowd, fully expecting them to riot, and hide real stones in your pockets so you can throw them at the audience when they attack you.
The result? Un Chien Andalou (1929).
The “Plot” (If we can even call it that)
There is no plot. If anyone tries to explain the plot of Un Chien Andalou to you, they are lying.
The film is a non-linear, time-jumping assault of bizarre, poetic, and disturbing images. A man sharpens a straight razor, looks at a thin cloud passing over the moon, and then slices a woman’s eyeball open. A man rides a bicycle while wearing a frilly white dress and a box around his neck. A severed hand lies in the street, being poked with a stick by an androgynous person. A man tries to assault a woman, but gets weighed down by a massive, literal burden: two grand pianos stuffed with dead, oozing donkeys, which are tied to two live, bewildered priests (one of whom is played by Salvador Dalí himself).
It is 16 minutes of pure, unfiltered subconscious madness. It’s like a TikTok feed curated by Sigmund Freud after a heavy night of drinking absinthe.
Why You Need to Watch This Tonight
- The Mother of All Shock Shots: The eye-slitting scene at the very beginning of the film is legendary. Even today, in an era of hyper-realistic CGI and extreme movie gore, watching that razor slice across the eye (which was actually a dead calf’s eyeball, thank goodness) will make you squirm, turn away, and curse the 1920s. It is still one of the most effective, visceral shocks in film history.
- The Rotten Donkey Pianos: The image of a man desperately trying to walk across a room while dragging two pianos, two dead donkeys, and Salvador Dalí is a masterpiece of dark, absurd comedy. It is a hilarious, heavy, and totally ridiculous visual metaphor for the weight of religion, society, and baggage.
- The “Anti-Logic” Vibe: Because Buñuel and Dalí actively banned anything that made sense, the film has a strange, hypnotic flow. It operates on the exact logic of a dream—where you are suddenly in a different room, or on a beach, or holding a severed hand, and your brain just accepts it.
- The Stones in the Pockets: At the film’s premiere, Buñuel was so terrified of the crowd’s reaction that he literally put heavy stones in his pockets to defend himself. To his utter disappointment, the wealthy, artsy Parisian crowd clapped, cheered, and called him a genius. Buñuel was furious because he wanted to outrage them, not entertain them.
The Verdict
Is it a good movie? It is a monumentally important masterpiece of avant-garde art. It proved that cinema didn’t need to tell a traditional story to evoke powerful, visceral emotions. At just 16 minutes, it is a short, sharp shock to your system that will completely scramble your brain and leave you wondering what on earth you just witnessed.
My Rating: 5 out of 5 ants crawling out of a human palm.
Wanna have your brain completely melted by 1920s dream-logic?
Turn off all the lights, put on some classic Argentinian tangos (which is what Buñuel played from a gramophone behind the screen at the premiere), and search for this surrealist classic on your favorite B-movie or silent film platform. Because it was made nearly a century ago, this entire brain-scrambling masterpiece is completely free and legally available for you to watch whenever you want.
[WATCH “UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929)” ON YOUTUBE (Opens in a new window)]
