Luis Bunuel was a revolutionary, both in his personal life and in what he put on film. In 1938, in collaboration with Salvador Dali, Bunuel made the incendiary short film Un Chien Andalou.

The film is fifteen minutes long and has three sections, all of which bare little relevance to each other in the literal sense, as they explore different emotions using different scenarios.

The idea for the film came when Bunuel told Dali of a dream he had in which a cloud sliced the moon in half “like a razor blade slicing though an eye.”. Not to be outdone, Dali responded that he had a dream about a hand crawling with ants. Both were fascinated by what the psyche could create.

In a deliberate contrast to the approach Bunuel’s mentor, Jean Epstein, took, which was to never leave anything in their work to chance, with every aesthetic decision having a rational decision, Bunuel and Dali were having none of that.

Screened at Studio des Ursulines, Bunuel was shocked by its positive reception. It was Bunuel’s intention to shock and insult the faux-intelligentsia that the French youth at the time believed they were, or Bunuel believed they believed they were.

L’Age d’Or

Bunuel’s next film, L’Age d’Or confirmed that Bunuel was one of the most original filmmakers around and better things were to come.

Commissioned on the strength of Un Chien Andalou by Marie-Laurie and Charles de Noailles, who were financial supporters of other artists like Man Ray. Originally intended to be only 15 minutes in length like its predecessor but actually, when it premiered came in at a little over an hour.

When it premiered, the film provoked attacks by the right-wing group League of Patriots, who took umbrage at the story told by Bunuel and Dali. They interrupted the screening by throwing ink at the cinema screen and assaulting viewers who opposed them; they then went to the lobby and destroyed art works by Dali, Joan Miro, Man Ray, Yves Tanguy, and others.

On 10 December 1930, the Prefect of Police of Paris, Jean Chiappe, arranged to have the film banned after the Board of Censors re-reviewed the film.

A contemporary right-wing Spanish newspaper published a condemnation of the film and of Bunuel and Dali, which described the content of the film as “…the most repulsive corruption of our age … the new poison which Judaism, Masonry, and rabid, revolutionary sectarianism want to use in order to corrupt the people”.