Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel reportedly carried rocks in their pockets during the premiere of their first film Un Chien Andalou, anticipating a violent reaction from the audience.
It was a fair concern. The movie might be almost 90 years old but it still has the power to provoke – the film features a shot of a woman getting her eye slashed open with a straight razor after all. As it turned out, rocks weren’t needed. The audience, filled with such avant-garde luminaries as Pablo Picasso and André Breton liked the film. A disappointed Dalí later reported that the night was “less exciting” than he had hoped.
Un Chien Andalou featured many of Dalí’s visual obsessions – eyeballs, ants crawling out of orifices and rotting animals. Dalí delighted in shocking and inciting people with his gorgeous, disturbing images. And he loved grandiose spectacles like a riot at a movie theater.
Dalí and Buñuel’s next movie, the caustic L’Age d’or, exposed the differences between the two artists and their creative partnership imploded in pre-production. Buñuel went on to make a string of subversive masterpieces like Land Without Bread, The Exterminating Angel and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie; Dalí largely quit film in favor of his beautifully crafted paintings.
