--- title: "Un Chien Andalou" year: 1929 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/un-chien-andalou" fi1m_id: "un-chien-andalou" imdb_id: "tt0020530" tmdb_id: 626 wikidata_id: "Q190575" fi1m_score: 83 critics_score: 84 critics_reviews: 6 published: "2026-09-25T00:06:57.178966+00:00" updated: "2026-09-25T00:07:05.996521+00:00" region: "BG" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Un Chien Andalou (1929) Directed by Luis Buñuel · 17m · Fantasy, Horror, Thriller ## Identity Un Chien Andalou - **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/un-chien-andalou - **Type:** Film - **Fi1m ID:** un-chien-andalou - **IMDb ID:** tt0020530 - **TMDB ID:** 626 - **Wikidata ID:** Q190575 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020530/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/626, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q190575 **Fi1m score: 83** · Critics 84 from 6 reviews *In a sentence:* The eye goes in the first minute; the film spends the other sixteen daring you to look for a plot > Buñuel and Dalí’s seventeen-minute provocation still does what it was built to do: one image in the first minute that we cannot watch, followed by a quarter of an hour that refuses to add up. Recommended, once, with the lights off and no expectation of sense. ## Synopsis An intertitle reads ‘Once upon a time’. A man (Luis Buñuel) sharpens a razor on a balcony and watches a cloud approach the full moon, then holds open the eye of a seated young woman. ‘Eight years later’, a man (Pierre Batcheff) in a frilled collar and skirt cycles down a street with a striped box on a strap, and topples off outside the flat where a young woman (Simone Mareuil) is reading. She lays his clothes out on her bed, and finds him in her room staring at his palm, where ants crawl from a hole. Down in the street, an androgynous figure (Fano Messan) pokes a severed hand with a stick while a policeman keeps back a crowd, and the two of them watch from the window. ## Review Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí wrote *Un Chien Andalou* from their dreams, and kept only the images neither of them could explain. Buñuel directed it, edited it, produced it and appears in its first minute holding a razor. It is silent, it runs 17 minutes, and it has no story, on purpose. Anything that looked like a reason for one shot to follow another was thrown out. What remains is a run of pictures joined by intertitles that lie to you: ‘Once upon a time’, ‘Eight years later’, as though a tale were being told. The first minute is the one everybody knows, and it has lost nothing. Buñuel strops the razor, tests it on his thumbnail, steps onto a balcony and watches a thin cloud drift towards the full moon. The cloud crosses the moon; the blade crosses the eye. We winced and looked away, and we have done so every time we have watched it, knowing perfectly well that the eye belongs to a dead calf and the join is a straight cut. The trick is the match. Buñuel, as his own editor, puts the moon and the eye in the same part of the frame, so the mind has accepted the one before it is shown the other. It is a piece of cutting a modern horror film would be pleased with, done in 1929. Albert Duverger photographs all of this as if it were a domestic comedy. The light is flat and even, the flat is an ordinary flat, the street an ordinary street, and nothing in the framing warns you that an image is meant to be strange. That is the right decision. A man staring at ants climbing out of a hole in his palm is more disturbing in a plainly lit bedroom than he would be in shadow and smoke. The severed hand on the pavement, prodded with a stick by Fano Messan’s androgyne while a policeman holds the crowd back, is shot from above like a road accident, and treated like one by everyone on screen. Simone Mareuil holds the film together. Her job is to react to things that make no sense, and she does it without flinching or overplaying: the same steady face for a wardrobe and for a man’s hand. Pierre Batcheff has a harder time. He is asked to leer and paw and roll his eyes, and in the stretches where he pursues Mareuil round the bedroom the acting belongs to a sillier film. Dalí turns up briefly as a seminarist and looks pleased about it. There are pianos later, with things attached to them, and we will leave you to find out what. The second half is looser than the first. Once the opening has done its work, the film settles into dissolves and dislocations, and some land and some do not. Several scenes run well past the point where their one idea has been used up, and for two or three minutes in the middle we were restless, which in a film this short is a real cost. Then an image arrives, involving a mouth, that we will not describe, and we were sitting forward again. The soundtrack on most prints alternates Wagner with Argentine tango, the records Buñuel played on a gramophone at the first screenings, and the swing from swooning strings to dance band is its own joke about how seriously to take any of it. Buñuel went on to a long career of films that were calmer and crueller than this one. Here the aim is simpler: to offend, and to make sure nobody could tidy the offence into a meaning afterwards. Britain did not get the film in a cinema until 4 April 1968, thirty-nine years after it was made. It carries a 15 certificate now, for seventeen minutes. Watch it once, late, in the dark, and read nothing first. Then read what Buñuel said about it and watch it again, and see whether knowing helps. It did not help us. The eye still goes in the first minute, and we still look away. *Fi1m score 83, published 25 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics agree, and agree warmly. Nearly every review treats the short as a deliberate provocation that still lands, and the praise clusters on the images rather than on anything so orderly as a story: the eye-slicing sequence, which Empire singles out as an early landmark of screen gore, and the moment a man’s mouth becomes armpit hair, which The Guardian picks as its own startling favourite. Several critics point to the shared obsessions of Buñuel and Dalí as the source of the imagery, and most credit the film with an influence that has outlasted its shock. The spread is narrow. The only real complaint about the film itself is that it is hard to see well: The AV Club finds the American disc’s picture quality appalling while still calling the film essential. The one lukewarm number belongs to Time Out, though the review’s reasoning is not on record, so it is difficult to say what the reservation is. ## Straight answers **Is Un Chien Andalou worth watching?** *Un Chien Andalou* is worth watching once, late and in the dark, for anyone willing to sit through seventeen minutes that refuse to add up, and we scored it 83. The opening minute still makes us look away, and the second half is looser, with a restless stretch in the middle. Read nothing about it first. **How long is Un Chien Andalou, and what is it rated?** *Un Chien Andalou* runs 17m. It is a fantasy and horror film. **Where can I watch Un Chien Andalou in Bulgaria?** *Un Chien Andalou* is not on any streaming or rental service in Bulgaria at the moment. It is available in 4 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily. **How violent or frightening is Un Chien Andalou, and is it suitable for children?** *Un Chien Andalou* carries a UK 15 certificate and is not suitable for children, chiefly for one image in the first minute: a razor drawn across an open eye, cut so cleanly that we still flinch knowing it is a calf's. After that it is unsettling rather than gory, with ants crawling from a palm and a severed hand on a pavement. The squeamish should skip the opening. **How does Un Chien Andalou compare to Eraserhead?** *Un Chien Andalou* is the shorter, sharper provocation, and [*Eraserhead*](https://film.one/film/eraserhead) is the film that learned its nerve from it and stretched that refusal to explain across a feature. Buñuel's seventeen minutes offend and stop; Lynch builds a sustained bleakness with a human centre in Jack Nance, which can tire. Start with Buñuel if you want the shock, Lynch if you want to live in it. **What should I watch after Un Chien Andalou?** After *Un Chien Andalou*, try [*L'Age d'Or*](https://film.one/film/lage-dor) (1930, Fi1m 74): Buñuel and Dalí again, at feature length, with the church and the rich as targets. Then [*Vampyr*](https://film.one/film/vampyr) (1932, Fi1m 85): Dreyer’s horror moves with the same dream logic, shot through gauze and fog; and [*Eraserhead*](https://film.one/film/eraserhead) (1977, Fi1m 84): Lynch’s debut owes this film its nerve and its refusal to explain a single image. ### Reviews we read (6) - **Slant Magazine**, Ed Gonzalez (4/4): Gonzalez presents the film as a groundbreaking, confrontational work of surrealist cinema. He singles out how its imagery draws on the shared creative histories and obsessions of Buñuel and Dalí. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/un-chien-andalou/) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (95/100, inferred): Bradshaw calls the short a masterpiece of provocation and praises its anarchic, surreal power. He singles out its startling images, especially the transformation of a man’s mouth into armpit hair. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/News_Story/Critic_Review/Guardian_review/0,4267,1146569,00.html) - **Empire**, Kim Newman (90/100, inferred): Newman calls the short a surrealist masterpiece and a must-see. He singles out its still-shocking eye-slicing sequence as a seminal moment in film splatter. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/un-chien-andalou-review/) - **Total Film**, Total Film (4/5): The review welcomes the two films as provocative, iconoclastic Surrealist works. It praises their rich, disturbing imagery and dreamlike disruption of Hollywood conventions. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/un-chien-andalou-lage-dor-review/) - **The AV Club**, Noel Murray (75/100, inferred): Murray considers the DVD release vital viewing, praising the film’s unsettling shocks and lasting influence. He complains that the U.S. disc has appalling image quality. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/un-chien-andalou-1798200287) - **Time Out**, AP (64/100, inferred): The page is identified as a critique, but its review text is unavailable in the supplied capture. No verdict or specific praise or complaint can therefore be verified. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/fr/cinema/un-chien-andalou-1929) ## Details - **Director:** Luis Buñuel - **Director:** Luis Buñuel - **Screenplay:** Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí - **Cinematography:** Albert Duverger - **Editor:** Luis Buñuel - **Producer:** Luis Buñuel - **Cast:** Simone Mareuil as Young Girl; Pierre Batcheff as Man; Luis Buñuel as Man in Prologue (uncredited); Salvador Dalí as Seminarist (uncredited); Robert Hommet as Young Man (uncredited); Marval as Seminarist (uncredited); Fano Messan as Hermaphrodite (uncredited); Jaume Miravitlles as Fat Seminarist (uncredited) - **Runtime:** 17m - **First release (France):** 5 June 1929 - **Genres:** Fantasy, Horror, Thriller - **Budget:** $124,797 ## Where to watch in Bulgaria Not streaming, renting or buying in Bulgaria at the last check. Also available in: BR, ES, IT, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *L'Age d'Or* (1930), Fi1m 74: Buñuel and Dalí again, at feature length, with the church and the rich as targets. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/lage-dor.md) - *Vampyr* (1932), Fi1m 85: Dreyer’s horror moves with the same dream logic, shot through gauze and fog. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/vampyr.md) - *Meshes of the Afternoon* (1943): Maya Deren’s fourteen minutes of keys, knives and mirrors, made in a Los Angeles bungalow. - *Daisies* (1966): Two Czech girls wreck everything in sight; the cutting is as anarchic as they are. - *Eraserhead* (1977), Fi1m 84: Lynch’s debut owes this film its nerve and its refusal to explain a single image. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/eraserhead.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/un-chien-andalou