The great Surrealist succès de scandale and quite possibly the most famous short film of all time, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s Un Chien Andalou (also screening on May 22) contains one of cinema’s two most discussed scenes involving eyes. Chien’s gruesome eye-slicing is matched only by the famous Odessa Steps sequence in Sergei Eisenstein’s great propaganda film, Battleship Potemkin, in which a baby carriage teeters then topples down the Steps, and a sword-wielding Czarist soldier slashes a woman’s eye, crushing her spectacles and splattering her face with blood. The scene’s influence can be seen in L’Âge d’or, as well as in Cocteau’s Le Sang d’un poète, its shocking propagandistic use of montage appropriated for Surrealist purposes. The revolutionary struggle of the Bolsheviks and its masterful representation in the cinema, especially in Potemkin, was of great interest to the Surrealists who sought to liberate the spirit through extremes. Legend has it that the Surrealists were expelled from a screening of Potemkin for applauding hysterically during the scene of revolt over the rancid, maggot-infested meat. Eisenstein’s masterpiece was instantly hailed as a classic and was beloved by both the avant-garde and commercial filmmakers. Upon its release, David O. Selznick reportedly wrote to the heads of MGM suggesting they purchase a print as it would be “very advantageous to have the organization view it in the same way that a group of artists might study a Rubens or a Raphael.” Today, its status as one of the most important works of art is unquestionable.