In this blog post, we’ll explore the shocking imagery and surrealist expressions in ‘The Dog of Andalusia’, examining the significance of the film’s depictions of human sexual desire, the unconscious, madness, and the clash of images.

Shock and Chaos from the Very First Scene: The Eye-Slashing Scene

The film opens with a scene that is difficult to comprehend from the very beginning. Set to tango music, a man sharpens a razor blade, approaches a woman, and slashes her eye open with the razor’s sharp edge. As if foreshadowing his action, the scene immediately preceding this shows the pale moon hanging in the night sky, with clouds as sharp as razor blades passing across it. As soon as that scene ends, the scene of the woman’s eye being gouged out follows immediately—it was so brutal it sent chills down my spine. Since this was the most brutal film I had ever seen, the fear I felt from the very beginning reached its peak. Perhaps the reason this scene felt so brutal is that, among all human body parts, the eyes are the most sensitive to external stimuli, making the visual shock of this experience feel relatively much more intense.
As the film progresses, a child riding a bicycle appears, dressed in dark clothes with a box hanging from his neck; that box, with its diagonal stripes, continues to appear throughout the film until the very end. This clearly suggests that the director intended to imbue this box with some significance and convey a hidden meaning, but even after watching the final scene, I still did not understand the significance of that box. I even began to wonder if this film had been made without any causal relationships or clear meaning. Even if that were the case, however, knowing that this film is a cornerstone of surrealist cinema and a renowned classic, I did not dare to voice such an ignorant opinion.
There’s another scene that appears frequently in this film: ants swarming on the man’s palm. I wondered if showing this image repeatedly was meant to serve as a medium linking the man’s thoughts to the swarming ants. As the film moves on to another scene, a woman with androgynous features—dressed as a man—appears; she is playing around, poking a severed hand lying on the ground with a stick. What is this scene supposed to mean? What kind of meaning does this movie actually convey? Is it a film where one shouldn’t even discuss its hidden meanings? The longer I watched, the more confused I became.
However, my overall impression of this film is that, despite its brutal scenes, it’s a funny movie. Though its meaning remains completely elusive, it’s clear that this short film is one that makes you laugh.
Set to Wagner’s music, the scene shifts; soon, as the music changes to tango, the man becomes excited and suddenly approaches the woman. She backs away, but the man, his eyes wild, gropes her. The startled woman flees and threatens him with a tennis racket, but the man suddenly finds a rope on the floor, slings it over his shoulder, and pulls it, dragging a piano loaded with a rotting donkey’s carcass along with it. Since this film was created with a surrealist mindset, shocking images—such as the blood-dripping donkey’s head perched on the piano—may well be cinematic expressions of the Surrealist movement.
Upon deeper reflection, I began to think this scene might embody the man’s sexual desire. The man and woman seemed to be heading toward a happy ending as they displayed affection for each other on the beach, but then they presented me with an unexpected scene: the man and woman buried up to their chests in the sand on the beach. This scene was so ironic that I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
This film, which is difficult to understand and does not readily lend itself to analysis, did offer me a small insight: it is a film that explores human sexual desire and incorporates elements of the human unconscious and madness. I can’t help but think that this film places greater emphasis on the clash of images rather than on conveying a specific meaning. To help understand this film, I’ve briefly referenced Surrealism, the avant-garde, and Freud’s psychoanalysis.

The Unconscious and Strange Images as Seen Through Surrealism

Surrealism is “an artistic movement that sought to transcend reality by expressing the irrational emotions, the subconscious, fantasies, and daydreams inherent in the human unconscious through new expressive techniques.”
Surrealism was an avant-garde literary and artistic movement that emerged primarily in France for about 20 years, from 1919 until shortly after the outbreak of World War II. Compared to other avant-garde movements of the 20th century, such as Dadaism and Futurism, it was the most widely disseminated and controversial artistic movement during World War I and World War II.
World War I inflicted deep psychological wounds on Europeans, creating conditions that led people to explore an alternative world in opposition to this reality. However, the will to transcend this reality proved impossible for humans, and it was here that attention turned to the world of dreams, as illuminated by Freud’s psychoanalysis. Surrealism fundamentally sought to transcend the boundaries of experience; by fusing reality with instinctual and latent dream experiences, it aimed to expand the perspective on logical, tangible reality itself in order to reach an absolute and transcendent reality.
The method employed by Surrealism was precisely “strange strangeness,” which they achieved by removing familiar objects from their everyday contexts. A work created for this purpose is Magritte’s ‘Collective Invention’, which creates a situation where it is unclear whether the subject is a person or a fish. Another technique of strangeness is “deformation,” which refers to the distortion of form. They also utilized techniques such as collage and montage, producing bewildering results in works where seemingly unrelated objects are jumbled together.
Ultimately, what they sought was not simply to express dreams, but rather to provide people—who had become trapped in the same routine and whose lives had become overly conceptualized—with an opportunity for broader awareness.
Furthermore, Surrealism places great importance on a world of fantasy and imagination that is not governed by reason. Therefore, while Surrealism is generally considered to be in opposition to Realism or Abstract Art, this is not necessarily the case. If one traces the roots of Surrealism, they lie in Dadaism. Dadaism, as a movement to subvert established traditions and order following World War I, celebrated irrationality and sometimes veered toward unethical directions; it adopted new techniques such as collage and direct forms of expression like the “objet,” and when it came to eroticism—a powerful tool of Surrealism—it can be said to have directly inherited Dadaism’s immoral stance.
However, if we look further back for the origins of Surrealism, we must naturally trace it back to the Cubist movement. This is because, among the art movements of the 20th century, Cubism possessed a more innovative sense of space than even Fauvism or Expressionism. Surrealist space is, in many cases, an imaginary space and an unreal space. Therefore, Surrealism is characterized by a conception of space that indirectly continues the Cubist tradition.
Surrealism turned its attention to the realm of the unconscious, which until then had been hidden beneath the surface like an iceberg. In other words, it is the world at the opposite pole of reason, on the opposite side of rationality. Before the emergence of Surrealism, art focused on the point where reason and emotion, spirit and mind, converged.
Although enthusiasm for Surrealism gradually waned after the 1930s, it did not disappear entirely and has persisted on a small scale even after World War II. The significance of this movement in 20th-century aesthetics lies in the fact that it marked the revival of the surprising and the exotic at a time when there was little interest in such things.

Freud’s Psychoanalysis and the Human Unconscious

The unconscious elements described by Freud consist largely of desires, wishes, and activities rooted in primal and physical instincts. These unconscious elements operate without considering anything other than immediate gratification and, therefore, rarely manifest in the conscious mind—a realm typically focused on adapting to reality or avoiding external dangers. A prime example is sexual desire. Ultimately, most dreams can be seen as the result of a conflict between the conscious and the unconscious.
For example, Freud viewed Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, the “Mona Lisa,” as an expression of Leonardo’s unconscious sexual desire toward his mother, who was an illegitimate child. Since Leonardo spent his early childhood exclusively with his mother and did not experience the so-called Oedipus complex—which typically arises through a relationship with the father—his sexual desire toward his mother during childhood remained uninhibited. The Oedipus complex was coined in reference to the tragic fate of King Oedipus in Greek mythology. Based on the myth that King Oedipus was destined to kill his father and marry his mother, it is said that boys—particularly between the ages of three and five—harbor hostility toward their fathers and sexual desires to seek affection from their mothers, just like King Oedipus. However, because these sexual desires imply incest, they are prohibited. The period during which this desire arises is called the Oedipal stage or the phallic stage. Because he harbors hostility toward his father, the boy develops a fear that he might be castrated in retaliation. This fear serves as the catalyst for overcoming the Oedipus complex, and the child gradually transitions into the latent stage. Furthermore, upon reaching puberty, sexual impulses intensify and Oedipal desires resurface; however, these desires are transferred to a member of the opposite sex and are thereby overcome.
The question, however, is how one can truly know another person’s unconscious. According to Freud, we can ultimately only indirectly gauge the contents of the unconscious through behaviors or mental phenomena in which it manifests—most notably, through dreams. Freud proposed the method known as “psychoanalysis” as the most effective way to approach the nature of the unconscious. Psychoanalysis remains an important theory in psychiatry today for understanding and treating patients’ psychology. Psychoanalytic theory forms the foundation for understanding the pathology of all manner of mental illnesses and is particularly central to the treatment of neuroses and personality disorders.
Furthermore, Freud’s method of psychoanalysis did not influence only the field of medicine. Although initially designed to treat patients, psychoanalysis has also been of great help in understanding the mental world of the general public, not just patients. Freud once compared psychoanalysis to a telescope or a microscope, stating that just as celestial bodies and microorganisms invisible to the naked eye can be seen through these instruments, psychoanalysis allows us to see the world of the unconscious that is invisible at the level of our consciousness.
Key concepts in psychoanalysis include the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious; sexuality, sexual drives, or unconscious drives that persist within the unconscious; and the body and mental phenomena, which serve as the source and conduit of these drives.
The connection between Surrealism and Freudian psychology cannot be denied. The Surrealists sought to create a new world by liberating the realm of the unconscious and instincts that Freud had uncovered.

The “Scandalous” Films of Luis Buñuel

Luis Buñuel, a master filmmaker born in Spain during the 20th century who concluded his long cinematic career in France after stints in France, the United States, and Mexico, was a unique figure who, despite spending most of his life making commercial films, consistently produced films that served as “scandals” defying the mainstream culture of his time.
From his debut film ‘Un Chien Andalou’ to his final work ‘That Obscure Object of Desire’, he maintained that the consistent worldview underlying his films was Surrealism. Buñuel persistently sought to demonstrate just how futile and meaningless human attempts are to control one’s instincts and irrational aspects through the frameworks of institutions and civilization. Consequently, his cinematic universe incorporated—sometimes explicitly, sometimes in a subtly devious manner—attacks on religion as a suppressor of human nature, criticism of the Catholic Church (the setting of his upbringing), mockery and contempt for the European bourgeoisie, and an exploration of sexuality as a realm of the unconscious and instinct.
These characteristics of Buñuel’s films are best encapsulated in his second film, ‘The Golden Age’. It is nearly impossible to summarize the plot of this one-hour film. The film begins by depicting the ecology of scorpions in a documentary-like style, then features bandits, priests, soldiers, and bureaucrats in succession, while a young couple—who appear to be the protagonists—engage in a love affair. The central plotline revolves around their love being constantly thwarted by the bourgeoisie, yet the film’s final section unexpectedly shifts to a sequel to Sade’s novel ‘The 120 Days of Sodom’. One of the four “depraved individuals” appearing here is depicted as Jesus, and the final image of ‘The Golden Age’ is a cross abandoned in the desert. Interwoven throughout this narrative are absurd and grotesque snippets of bourgeois life, while the subtitles, dialogue, and music (“The Golden Age” is one of the earliest sound films) make no secret of what the film is targeting.
Buñuel’s first film, ‘Un Chien Andalou’, made in collaboration with the painter Salvador Dalí, was intended as an attack on the art-for-art’s-sake avant-garde cinema then in vogue in Parisian cultural circles. Contrary to the filmmakers’ intentions, however, it was met with enthusiastic acclaim from bourgeois cultural figures, who mistakenly viewed it as a work that pioneered new frontiers in “art cinema.” Buñuel’s next film, ‘The Golden Age’, which he was able to make on the strength of ‘Un Chien Andalou’’s success, provoked fierce anger and protests from everyone except a few left-wing intellectuals. The most controversial element was the “blasphemous” scene depicting Jesus as the protagonist of a Sade novel. Members of far-right groups who stormed the theaters where the film was being screened tore the projection screen, and the film continued to be shown for several days over the torn screen. Ultimately, in the face of seething public opinion and pressure from the Catholic Church, the Paris municipal authorities banned the film and confiscated the prints.
Until his “return” to European cinema with ‘The Forgotten Ones’ in 1950, Buñuel was dogged by the label of “the director who made that infamous film,” and the original negative of ‘The Golden Age’ was not restored to its original form until 1993. While ‘Un Chien Andalou’ was gradually gaining recognition as a “classic,” ‘L’Époque d’Or’ remained, in a sense, a “scandal.”
Luis Buñuel’s major works include ‘Un Chien Andalou’ (1929), ‘L’Époque d’Or’ (1930), ‘La Terre sans pain’ (1932), ‘Les Forgotten’ (1950), ‘Viridiana’ (1961), ‘Diary of a Country Girl’ (1963), ‘Simon of the Desert’ (1965), ‘Tristana’ (1970), ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’ (1973), and ‘That Obscure Object of Desire’ (1977).

“Un Chien Andalou”: Created Through the Clash of Images

A man who appears to be a barber sharpens a razor blade and then approaches a woman. He then uses the sharp blade to cut out her eye. This is a famous scene from the surrealist film “Un Chien Andalou,” created by Salvador Dalí and his friend Luis Buñuel. The scenes that unfold before us as we peer through the woman’s eyes—this new reality—are also a succession of shocks. A donkey’s head suddenly appears on a piano; a man abruptly lunges at the woman, attempting to assault her. The film’s narrative, devoid of any established causal relationships, concludes with a scene of a man and a woman on a beach, their lower bodies buried in the sand.
The film uses rapid montage techniques to showcase the collision of images but conveys no message to us. Nothing is explained or justified, and viewers must strive to find the reasons behind the strange scenes and events on their own. The Surrealists themselves were enthralled by this strangeness and scoffed at critical interpretations of their work.
Film is a medium particularly well-suited to surrealist humor. Within the reality of film, the mind is free to flow in fantastical ways. ‘Un Chien Andalou’ is brimming with such humor. If we were to question the logical connections between clashing scenes, we would be unable to appreciate this type of film at all. We can only enjoy its bizarre and mischievous humor. Yet, precisely because of this, the subversion of the everyday appearance of existence and the resulting manifestation of a new reality seem to deliver a greater shock and a greater sense of chaos.

Avant-Garde Cinema and the Subversion of Traditional Cinematic Grammar

The 1920s and 1930s were the periods when avant-garde experimentation in the arts was at its peak. This was marked by the emergence of Dadaism and Surrealism, rooted in the cynicism, disillusionment, and nihilism that followed World War I. It was from this context that avant-garde cinema was born. The term “avant-garde cinema” refers to the earliest experimental films that originated in Europe in the 1920s. While modern criticism often broadens the term “avant-garde cinema” to include any film that demonstrates new and original techniques and experimental approaches in the process of expressing cinematic ideas, the earliest avant-garde films specifically refer to those that employed techniques associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements.
Avant-garde cinema was actively produced in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s, particularly in Paris. Disdaining the commercial film landscape, which was stuck in trite, trivial romantic stories between men and women, these filmmakers began to capture the human consciousness on film. Critics coined the term “avant-garde cinema” to signify that it was ahead of mainstream commercial cinema. Meanwhile, avant-garde cinema was influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism. Dadaism and Surrealism stem from a rejection of “civilization,” as they believed civilization was the primary culprit behind World War I. Using the rejection of convention, contempt for refined tastes, humor, irrationalism, and exotic atmospheres as their main weapons, these movements destroyed traditional values and idols while extolling individualism, hedonism, and anarchism.
The pioneer of avant-garde cinema is Robert Wiene’s ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ (1919). The film’s plot—in which the magician Caligari selects a victim, puts him under hypnosis, and compels him to commit all manner of evil deeds on his behalf—combined with its eerie atmosphere, surreal lighting, and color palette, created a truly sensational effect. Inspired by this film, Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel released their 17-minute collaborative work, ‘Un Chien Andalou’ (1929). Scenes such as a donkey lying dead on a piano and an eyeball being sliced open by a razor blade are considered highlights of avant-garde cinema that reflect the surrealist movement.
By emphasizing its exploration of dreams, the unreal, and the unconscious, avant-garde cinema freely addressed the reality of sexuality—a subject that had previously been restricted by censorship and other forms of regulation. For this reason, films in this genre explicitly depict all manner of sexual acts, including homosexuality, masturbation, masochism, and voyeurism. Furthermore, directors constructed narratives based on spontaneous thoughts and inspirations in the moment, without a script; they created images by drawing or scratching directly onto film strips with a pencil; and they even attached objects such as butterflies, flowers, sand, and stones to the film before projecting it. An experimental avant-garde film that subverts the traditional techniques of mainstream commercial cinema. It influenced underground filmmakers active in New York and San Francisco in the 1950s, laying the foundation for the emergence of hippie culture in the 1960s.

How to Appreciate ‘Un Chien Andalou’

‘Un Chien Andalou’, a collaborative work by Spain’s original cinematic maverick, Luis Buñuel, and Salvador Dalí—one of the most famous names in modern art history alongside Picasso—is a film that experimented with the medium of cinema within the Surrealist movement. At one time, Buñuel and Dalí, along with Lorca—who, like them, created a shared modern cultural legacy and was just as famous—led the Surrealist movement in Spain at the turn of the century, and ‘Un Chien Andalou’ is a product of that Surrealist period. Thus, one might say that the jarring and shocking images—such as a bleeding donkey’s head perched on a piano—are precisely the cinematic expression of the Surrealist movement.
Finding hidden meanings in ‘Un Chien Andalou’ is an extremely difficult task. One should certainly not attempt to determine exactly how the creative methodologies of free association or automatic writing were applied. While ‘Un Chien Andalou’ is undoubtedly a classic in film history, I believe that approaching it as if it were merely a required viewing on a list of essential films is not the correct way to watch this film.
Surrealist cinema can be defined as a genre that maximizes the human imagination. The connection with this great filmmaker—whom even Alfred Hitchcock praised by declaring, “The greatest director in the world is Luis Buñuel”—goes far beyond simply dusting off a long-forgotten film to watch and appreciate. Through Luis Buñuel’s sharp criticism and satire, this film serves as a catalyst that challenges the various stereotypes surrounding us and provides an opportunity to confront them more vigorously.

‘Andalusia’

Andalusia is a region in southern Spain bordering the western tip of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It covers an area of 87,280 square kilometers and consists of eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Córdoba, Cádiz, Jaén, Málaga, Granada, and Almería. Summers are hot and dry, while winters are mild and rainy. With a Mediterranean climate, the lowlands enjoy as many as 250 days of sunshine per year and feature subtropical vegetation, whereas the peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountain range receive snow for three to four months. Geographically, the region is divided into three areas from north to south: the Guadalquivir River lowlands, the Baetic System (including the Sierra Nevada Mountains), and the Mediterranean coast. The lowlands are well-irrigated, leading to a developed agricultural sector; olive cultivation is particularly active in the Guadalquivir River lowlands. There are also many vineyards, and large-scale farms primarily growing rice are distributed in the downstream delta region. Because the water table remains high even during the summer dry season, pastures are lush, and the region has traditionally been used for raising bulls for bullfighting. Sugarcane, bananas, and cotton are also cultivated in the coastal plains. This region is characterized by large-scale farms operated by large landowners, resulting in a large number of landless agricultural workers, as well as a prevalence of absentee landlords and low-productivity management practices. Abundant mineral resources, such as iron, lead, zinc, and copper, are mined primarily in the mountainous regions. Although industrialization has progressed and factories have been built in various cities, the region remains underdeveloped. Recently, tourism development has been advancing along the eastern coast, centered on the Costa del Sol.
Because it borders the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean and is close to Africa, it has been subject to frequent external invasions since ancient times. According to Strabo, the ancient Greek geographer and historian, the Kingdom of Tartessos was located near present-day Huelva and engaged in trade with the Phoenicians, who founded Cádiz around 1100 BC. The Greeks also established a colony at Mainake near Málaga, but after Carthage’s defeat in the Punic Wars around the 2nd century BC, the region became a province of the Roman Empire. Its capital, Córdoba, produced literary figures such as Seneca and Lucanus.
Starting around 411, there were invasions by the Huns, followed by a period of Visigothic rule. In 711, Muslim forces led by Talik crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and defeated the Visigothic King Rodrigo at the Battle of Guadalete. The name “Andalusia” originates from the Muslim term “Bandalusia,” which referred to the kingdom of the Vandals, a Germanic tribe. Initially subordinate to the Caliph of Damascus, the region gained independence under Abd al-Rahman I (reigned 756–788), who founded the Later Umayyad Dynasty, and reached its zenith during the reign of Abd al-Rahman III (reigned 912–961). After the death of Mansur, the vizier of Hisham II, the kingdom collapsed and fragmented into numerous small principalities. Although the Almoravid and Almohad dynasties intervened after the 11th century, the Christian forces emerged victorious at the Battle of Tolosa in 1212, and the 800-year-long Reconquista came to an end in 1492 with the entry of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic Monarchs, into Granada.
Subsequently, in the 18th century, Seville and Cádiz prospered as bases for development in the New World. After the 19th century, a Supreme Council was established in Cádiz to resist the French invasion, and the first constitution was promulgated; however, rebellions led by figures such as Riego frequently broke out, living conditions for the common people deteriorated drastically, and a secret society known as the “Black Hand” ran rampant.
Furthermore, the influence of large landowners was strong; during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–39, they supported Franco’s rebel forces, leading to fierce battles in various regions. The region’s intense southern sunshine and numerous attractive historical sites, such as the Alhambra Palace, attract tourists from all over the world.