L’AGE D’OR and UN CHIEN ANDALOU -- Luis Bunuel

Going to screenings of classic masterpieces is a good intellectual exercise to find out how they influenced more contemporary films and film makers. L’AGE D’OR and UN CHIEN ANDALOU, Luis Bunuel's two earliest films in colaboration with Dali, have been well discussed in the art history and in the context of surrealism. But they only get a chance to be shown side by side until very recently. So when Castro Theatre finally put them on this week, , we decided that we could not possibly miss this rare treat. As a Luis Bunuel fan, I watched most of his later and more famous films. These two films are the missing link towards understanding where he started and how he developed an artistic style that is still so talked about in every film schools.

I walked out the theatre playing name-dropping games with Diego. David Lynch came to our minds right away: The discovery of a single ear in the very beginning of Blue Velvet seemed to be a straight variation of the scene is Un Chien Andalou, when a piece of broken hand was lying on the street; and then inevitably the hot name Matthew Barney, whose Cremaster Cycles probably borrowed a few editing tricks and ideas from Bunuel. After all, all of them are obsessed with violence and sexual "deviances", aiming to subvert and shock. If David Lynch had to obey rules of narrative films driven more often by characters and plots, Matthew Barney went a lot further than Bunuel since he aspired to make real art without any consideration of an average theatre goer.

Another exercise while watching these two films is to recognize all the signature images and tricks of surrealism, thought-provoking and groundbreaking 70 years ago and still fresh and interesting at this moment. Body parts (eyeball, specifically, is always a surrealist's favorite), juxtaposition of discordant images, large live animals or nasty small insects, bizarre and illogical sequence of actions, etc. It still works well into the sub consciousness and invokes our deepest psychological reactions (fear and horror, primarily) after being used again and again and almost becoming cinematic clichés.