A Surreal Short

Colin Marshall spotlights the above old-and-improved version of Un Chien Andalou, the classic 1929 short by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. He insists Filmoteca Española’s restoration is “not quite like those you’ve seen before, whether in a film studies class, on late-night television, or in some corner or another of the internet”:

Video artist and blogging cinephile Blake Williams had that impression, finding what he calls “a markedly different version of this classic than what I came to know on Youtube.” The film “plays in ‘actual time’, slowing down the hyper, 16 minutes cut to a more deliberately paced 21+ minutes” with visuals “less contrast-blown than any version I have seen, not to mention that it is no longer heavily cropped. The score, too, is different, dropping the now iconic tango back-and-forth with Wagner.” If you’ve long since grown used to all the images in Un Chien Andalou‘s once-shocking procession — the dragging piano, the ants in the palm, the rotting donkeys, the immortal eyeball slice — prepare to feel at least surprised by them once again. Though they have become much cleaner, they’ve also become no less troubling for it.