(1929, directed by Luis Buñuel)

- inducted 2014 –

“'Our only rule was very simple: No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted. We had to open all doors to the irrational and keep only those images that surprised us, without trying to explain why.'
— Luis Buñuel on making Un Chien Andalou
from his autobiography My Last Sigh (1983)

"Second by second, frame by frame, it’s hard to imagine a movie more perfect than Un Chien Andalou, the 16-minute 1928 Surrealist collaboration between Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali. Not because it’s technically flawless (though the visual effects are pretty effective) or because it’s impeccably plotted. It’s not. But as one image flows into the next, the movie’s inexorable dream logic pulls you in. It’s an eye-opener in every sense. From the man (Buñuel himself) who gazes dreamily at a thin cloud passing across the moon and then draws a straight razor across a woman’s eyeball, to the final tableau of the beach-combing lovers’ corpses half-buried in the sand 'au printemps…' the flow of images feels both free-associative and inevitable at the same time.

"You know what they say: You’ll laugh (at the Purloined Hair Patch Duel of the Sexes) and you’ll cry (at the dying man’s vision of a nude woman in the park, caressed by his trembling hand). And then there’s the mysterious box with the diagonal stripes (precursor of similar containers in Kiss Me Deadly, Barton Fink, Pulp Fiction and other recurring nightmares from our collective unconscious). And the music of Vincente Alvarez and His Tropical Orchestra (“Tango Argentino”) and Richard Wagner (“Tristan und Isolde”). Movies just don’t get any better — more haunting, more imaginative, more fun — than this." ~ Jim Emerson