Wacky and obscure, this 16-minute short, which outweighs its content, is the beginning of a slew of surrealist films in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. In later mainstream reviews, "An Andalusian Dog" was often reduced to a collection of disjointed, shocking, and dissonant images: dead horses on pianos and ants in their hands, for example. According to some critics, these out-of-the-ordinary shots give the film its overall strength, and Buñuel's intention to break with the continuum of conventional habits creates a worrisome narrative. It's a dialectic of superficial far-fetched connections and the chaotic state of the id that runs through Buñuel's film career.
For this kind of film, it is quite difficult to evaluate its quality and importance. This kind of film is completely stylized and based on the director's own artistic aesthetics. The only certainty is that all those who study film history will take the risk of watching the film again, and then seek answers that they agree with in all kinds of far-fetched interpretations.
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