After watching Un Chien Andalou for the first time one could feel at a loss as to how to interpret it. There were a lot of implicit subtle indications, themes and even more explicit ones. There’s certainly reason enough to label it a surrealist film. If it were not obviously relatable in some way to Freud’s work on psychoanalysis, and the manifestation of the combination of desire and the unconscious, it would certainly be a more puzzling film than it already is. The consistently shifting timeline between the events in the film is also one of the variables I consider to be quite confusing.
The film shows no hesitation in being gruesome; evident in the opening scene where we see a woman’s eye being opened with a razor blade. Naturally the audience is left somewhat in shock, and this ties in with Freud’s psychological model of the unconscious; repressed memories of traumatic events being hidden and buried deep away as to not effect the conscious mind. I believe this is reflected in how shortly and how quick the scene is. The soundtrack is also quite jovial and arguably unsuitable for the imagery portrayed.
The theme of eyes seems to run throughout the film on a few more examples; that of the man character when he is openly groping the female character, and the two dead donkeys or horses placed atop the two ground pianos which the male character is trying to pull along with him. From what I can tell, these animal’s eyes have also been removed.
There is also the consistent theme or obsession revolving around the severed (and the misfortune it brought to the woman who found it). The hand is coveted as a desirable object, which could again be related to the unconscious - or perhaps one of many other ways the film manifests the theme of fetish and obsession.
It's focus on psychoanalysis is prominent and unreasonable in that it must be understood in some form to be put into context; there is a lot of blatant imagery - both subtle and explicit, and symbolism of the same hidden or equally grotesque form. It has frequent and inconsistant chronological shifts, which in some sense is logical if the film is composed on repressed human emotions; the details of which would remain unclear and vague in real life, and this is reflected on screen.
The film seems intent on making in little sense as possible, with nothing in particular representing anything at all, and perhaps it can only be best explained through psychoanalysis in a vague effort to give it some sort of meaning. If the meaning of the film was to shock, I think it fulfilled it's function admirably well. There is little to be understood from one viewing alone and, with the lack of any particular plot or necessity behind the chronological gaps and jumps, would likely have left many people bewildered back when it was made in 1929 as it still does today.
It's focus on psychoanalysis is prominent and unreasonable in that it must be understood in some form to be put into context; there is a lot of blatant imagery - both subtle and explicit, and symbolism of the same hidden or equally grotesque form. It has frequent and inconsistant chronological shifts, which in some sense is logical if the film is composed on repressed human emotions; the details of which would remain unclear and vague in real life, and this is reflected on screen.
The film seems intent on making in little sense as possible, with nothing in particular representing anything at all, and perhaps it can only be best explained through psychoanalysis in a vague effort to give it some sort of meaning. If the meaning of the film was to shock, I think it fulfilled it's function admirably well. There is little to be understood from one viewing alone and, with the lack of any particular plot or necessity behind the chronological gaps and jumps, would likely have left many people bewildered back when it was made in 1929 as it still does today.
No comments:
Post a Comment