The great Surrealist succès de scandale and quite possibly the most famous short film ever made, Un Chien Andalou is the astonishing brain-child of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, and remains one of the most intriguing collaborations in the history of cinema. In full provocateur mode, Buñuel called the film “a despairing, passionate call for murder” and the film’s notorious and oft-quoted eye-slashing scene (administered by Buñuel himself) retains its horror. Its assault upon the viewer, and on notions of beauty and normality, is as potent today as it was when it was first screened in Paris, where it instantly provided Surrealism with its most iconic image. Surrealist to a tee, employing the irrational structure of a dream (and putting Kuleshov’s “creative geography” technique to good use), Chien offers putrefaction, decay, latent desires, dead donkeys, baffled and bound priests, androgyny, Freudian symbols, and the push/pull of an Argentinian tango juxtaposed with the wistful rhythms of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. Jean Vigo had endless praise for the film, calling it “a major work in every way: the assurance of its direction, the artfulness of its lighting, its perfect knowledge of visual and conceptual associations, its sure dream-logic, its admirable confrontation between the subconscious and the rational.” Forty years later, David Bowie screened it as his opening act during his legendary 1976 world tour. “Anyone halfway interested in the cinema sees it sooner or later, usually several times” (Roger Ebert).

The Spanish duo’s follow-up, L’Âge d’or, went even further, causing a riot at its premiere where Fascists and anti-Semites threw ink upon the screen in reaction to what they perceived as the anti-clerical nature of the film. L’Âge d’or was subsequently banned and grew in myth as the film maudit that ended Dalí and Buñuel’s promising professional relationship, as well as their friendship. The film opens with documentary footage of a scorpion (the zodiac sign governing sex and death), announces the founding of Rome, then develops into a Hollywoodesque love story, with elaborate set pieces and high key lighting. Its belle époque ambience is quickly subverted and the amour fou that dominates the film defies all preconceived logic, revelling in sexual transgression. Its famous Venus toe-sucking scene is one of its lightest touches. The “gold” in this golden age soon turns to shit and the film’s scatological punning, along with its irreverent Christ orgy, was enough to see it banned for more than fifty years. Financed by the Vicomte de Noailles who commissioned the work for his wife’s birthday (!!), L’Âge d’or created such an outrage that it curbed the production of subsequent Surrealist films.