Above you see the French and English titles for this 1928 silent directed by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali. However, my personal title for this film is: 16 Minutes of Your Life That You’ll Never Get Back.
Another film class must (at least that’s what the professors think); this surrealist film bombards viewers with a cornucopia of shocking images. Viewers are treated to a woman's eye being cut open with a razor blade; a man with a hole in his hand that is filled with ants, who hauls dead donkeys and live priests in grand pianos; severed hands poked at with canes; and, other nonsensical images.
There is no narrative to this film. The images are random and disconnected from one another. I’m sure more artsy people can identify themes in these images, but I have no desire to figure out which one represents love, lust, life, and death. I am not a Freudian and I have no inclination to use free association to decipher what the hell this film is supposed to represent other than avant-garde filmmaking at its height. It does not shock me that the "stars" of this film later committed suicide—one burned herself to death in a public square—because this film could drive anyone crazy.
This is one film that I could easily have done without seeing before my death.
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