Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog). Luis Buñuel, 1929.
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Edition screened: Included on BFI Blu-ray L’Age d’or, released 2011. French intertitles with English subtitles, no dialogue track. Runtime approximately 16 minutes.
Summary: Disrespectful use of dead animals’ bodies.
Details:
1) In one of cinema’s most famous scenes, a man (Buñuel himself) slits a woman’s eye with a razor at 0:01:30. The actual eye seen being cut in close-up is on the head of a deceased calf. The relationship to animal cruelty is foggy, but it is appropriate to acknowledge the facts of an often cited scene.
2) At 8:00 a man pulling ropes attempts to drag two grand pianos from one side of a room to the other. The heavy pianos are additionally weighed down with two donkey corpses, the two stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, and two priests (one of whom is Salvador Dalí). Brief shots of the donkeys indicate that they are real, and slightly rotted.
See comment for L’Age d’or.
