Alex da Silva The Man (Gaston Modot) and the Young Girl (Lya Lys) go through the film consumed by passion for each other. They long to be together but their moments together are constantly interrupted. The film is strewn together with imagery and comes to a halt after an hour.........do the lovers find happiness....?..The film starts interestingly with footage of scorpions but you soon realize that its all a pretentious piece of nonsense. It's made as a silent film with occasional dialogue and it has a non-stop soundtrack playing that at one point is so irritating that you will turn the sound down and want to watch it as a silent film. The continuous drum rolls must have driven cinema audiences mad. There are some genuinely funny moments, eg, when the Man kicks a dog and when he knocks over a blind man. Unfortunately, this humour is carried out in the name of art so its just pseudo nonsense. The film is crap.

LCShackley I'm a big fan of surrealist art, but this film by Bunuel (with some ideas from Dali) left me cold. Bunuel had a life-long grudge against the Catholic church and delighted in trying to offend Catholics in fairly silly ways. This is one of the silliest; almost like what you'd expect from a smart-aleck 18-year-old in film class. The last few minutes of the movie, which have nothing to do with anything else, are a final nose-thumbing at religion.If you read the "scholars" regarding this slow-paced, occasionally amusing film, it's all about how the church and society are guilty of sexual repression. If that is indeed the point, then Bunuel expresses it in the most roundabout fashion possible. The central male character is a nasty brute who loves kicking dogs and knocking blind men down in the street, and who mentally turns billboard ads into strange sexual fantasies. Is this behavior the church's fault (for interrupting his lovemaking), or is he just a jerk? I vote for the latter. I think Bunuel must have had a lot of personal hangups and chose the Catholics as the ones to blame.There are a few moments where you might cry, "Aha! surrealism!": a cow in a bed, a giraffe falling out a window (a poor model), a man shredding a feather pillow, a woman flushing a toilet while we watch pictures of seething lava (or a mud pit...hard to tell in B/W). The rest is forgettable self-indulgence. Unfortunately, Bunuel was still chasing the same bogey-men through the rest of his career (Viridiana, Discreet Charm...). If you're interested in seeing surrealism on the screen, check out Jean Cocteau's early work.

daniel charchuk I loved Un Chien Andalou. Like, really, really loved. There was something about its utterly bizarre surrealism and total lack of any semblance of a plot that really struck a cord with me. So I couldn't help but be slightly disappointed by this.Don't get me wrong, it has its fair share of wonderfully surreal imagery and truly unique moments, but it couldn't match the delicious randomness of Buñuel's earlier work. I think because it's too focused on telling a story, and subsequently mocking the Church and bourgeois society, to truly embrace its surrealist mentality. There's flashes of it, like the cow on the bed or throwing the bishop out the window, but, for the most part, it's far too concerned with making fun of stuff to actually be weird or artsy or even that interesting.Still, it's worth a look. There's a lot of worthwhile stuff here - even if it is masked by overtly satirical material - and it's a breeze to get through. And the woman fellating the statue's toes is bizarrely erotic and not something you're likely to find in a film of the 30s, no matter how surreal it is.For fans of Buñuel only, I think.

MartinHafer If you'd like a great April Fool's joke, then please by all means show this film to someone. However, it is important that you in no way criticize the film but instead talk about what an artistic triumph it is and how "they just don't make great films like this any more". As your victim watches many disconnected and nonsensical scenes (such as a cute dog getting punted for no apparent reason, a cow standing on the bed, a woman licking a statue's feet or Jesus apparently raping a woman), make lots of comments using words like "brilliance", "juxtaposed" or "transcendent"--all the while acting as if the film actually makes perfect sense and isn't a complete waste of an hour of your life. Also be sure to keep a straight face and feign shock when (and if) they say that they either didn't understand it or thought it had all the artistry of a cow patty. Then, to further mess with them, show them all the comments on IMDb, as nearly all (except for a few trouble-makers like almagz and rooprect) talk glowingly about what genius and artistry this film is! By the time you are done with this little charade, they'll most likely think they are idiots and will make an appointment with a psychologist. This, to me, is the ONLY possible reason to watch this horrid mess of a film!!! That, or you could show it to the prisoners at Guantanamo in order to get them to talk!If you ask me, the famous painting of dogs playing poker or a velvet Elvis painting are superior artistically.