I. INTRODUCTION The extensive literature on the film
Un Chien Andalou (1929), Luis Buñuel (Teruel, Aragón, 1900 - 1983), has stated more than once surreal character. Their arguments are based, in principle, the relationship he had with the surrealists Buñuel, the reception he got the film between them, and unconscious processes according to Sigmund Freud, who tried to represent in his film. A good summary of the rivers of ink written about the relationship
Un Chien Andalou with psychoanalysis, and from there, with surrealism, Victor Fuentes puts it in the following quote:
"(... ), both by way of the content, the film is rooted, something that is maintained throughout his career, in the primary processes of the psyche (with its three fantasies: the primal scene, seduction and castration), which requires the form of film, like others of their own where he could enjoy his creative freedom with the laws discontinuity logical and spatial sound. I am also interested to note that the fury of passion that first, like so many other films, from the id, the realm of passions. I noted that duel scene where the protagonist settles a pistol to his double, who can interpret, in turn, as the Super-Yo, who is to impose the requirements of the principle of reality the id, based in the pleasure. "The interior minister, as I mentioned, as a metaphor for Super-I or the reality principle, it appears from his second film, the penultimate, the Phantom of Liberty "(Fuentes, 2005: 273).
There are also readings that conflict with the above thesis, such as Gennaro Talens, which states that "it is a job that might be more correct to define in terms of 'radical realism'" (Talens, 1986: 50). sustains this reading from the consideration of Un Chien Andalou as "a desperate, passionate call for murder "(Talens, 1986: 51). And then added that:
" (...) which stresses is that Buñuel recounts a dream, that is, do not confuse the basic material properties corresponding to the work done on it. The consequences of this proposal are, in my view, quite clear: a) act on devices, irrationally made in the field of perception by the viewer usual, and as a corollary of the above, b) to stage the arbitrariness of symbols too easy and unquestioned. In this regard Un chien andalou is not, nor is it intended to be, a film "avant garde", but quite the opposite. His film rewrites some way, the history of contemporary cinema. His deliberate bill "anti-art" can be seen, then, as a backlash against avant-garde cinema of the era, characterized by Buñuel as that which is directed exclusively to the artistic sensibility and reason of the viewer, with his play of light and shade, photo effects, concern about the mounting rhythmic and the search for new procedures technicians, all done in a perfectly conventional and reasonable "(Talens, 1986: 50).
Without flatly dismiss the above argument, in what follows try to turn on the interpretation linking it to the baroque. To do this, first specify our framework for discussion, referring to the Baroque as a cultural constant, and the relations between film and the Baroque.
cultural Baroque In recent decades the notion of the Baroque has exceeded its historical limits, now considered a "constant" cultural. Therefore, it has been called "cultural Baroque", as distinguished from "historical Baroque, limited to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and as such liable to appear in various historical moments. To make this enough the following quote from Eugenio D'Ors, one of the first to raise this line of interpretation that has more of a follower:
"Consideration of the baroque as a" constant " of Culture, according to the thesis we consider successful, since the valiant battle waged in 1931 in Abbey Pontigny involves a triple confiscation. First, because the concept can not chronologically cantons at a particular time in history, according to the routine that persists in attributing it solely to the XVII and XVIII. Nor does it appear legitimate and give any geographical limits, and others, idle to discuss whether this is a southern style, typical of countries where the Counter-working spirit, or Nordic, the result of anti-traditional vocation of Protestantism. It will be impossible, in short, see the baroque phenomenon unique to the history of art and study only in the field of architecture and sculpture, as was customary a few years ago "(D'Ors, 2004: 108). In general, this line has been continued reading by a number of researchers, among which highlight the contributions of Omar Calabrese, Europe, and in the Latin American work Sarduy, Mabel Morana. Roberto González Echevarría and Mariano Picon Salas.
Film and Baroque
Regarding the relationship between the film and the Baroque, Antonio Domínguez Leiva said that "it is possible to distinguish the origins of cinema trend "Realistic" and "objective"-associated with the name of Lumière, and heiress of scientific photography, and other "unreal" and "fantastic", associated with Méliès and heir to the dioramas and magic lantern "(Domínguez Leiva 2004: 1203).
also Sánchez Vidal stated that the use of technology directors divided into two major trends, regardless of genres, schools or styles: those looking for naturalism "in the creation of" their "alternative reality, subject to conditions human perception (natural positions and angles, perspective is not deformed, lighting justified), and the trend "expressionist", which we also call "baroque", using devices that the viewer can perceive and to be accepted and interpreted correctly by him and break the narrative continuity "[quoted by Domínguez Leiva: VV.AA. General history of cinema, vol. XII, The Cinema in the era of audiovisual, Madrid, Cátedra, 1995, p. 47]. (Domínguez Leiva, 2004: 1204).
From this perspective, we can assume that the Baroque is a cultural framework and in the case of film, another historic, from which we come to review the contents of Un Chien Andalou, Luis Buñuel.
II. Baroque elements in Un Chien Andalou [1] With regard to the relationship of the films of Luis Buñuel and the Baroque, in a recent work of Jesus M. Current Cordero, FJ Silva Fuentes and May set the following:
"Despite Buñuel's views regarding the traditional literature, it is undeniable that the avant-garde looked with sympathy to the baroque aesthetic movements as complex emerged from the crisis of European consciousness. The Baroque Buñuel is evident throughout his work, and can attest to the trend in numerous shots iconographic composition ("Latest Dinners everywhere), character sets clear perspective on the same tables Postclassic, with alternating pairs "orthodox" and "unorthodox", complacency in the figures of people bleeding, and in general, the taste for evidence of Strap on a kind of filmic imagery "(Current Cordero, Sources and Silva, s / f, s / pp.).
Although the authors' work mentioned above focuses on the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie, in its arguments relate aspects of Un Chien Andalou, generalizing the findings to the entire film production director of Aragon. Will specify its relation to the Baroque through the three aspects in a dog Andalusian: metaphor, the light and assembly.
baroque metaphor As pointed out Genara Pulido Tirado, "one must distinguish two types of metaphors: the purely ornamental, Renaissance-style, and clever metaphor which is a condensed amount of concept" (Pulido Tirado, 2004 : 416). The latter, connected to a series of rhetorical procedures, paradox, comparison, allegory, intended to achieve "escape from reality", an essential feature of the baroque, both "idealistic, where the flight comes up, styling and beautifying literary forms of reality everyday and infrarrealists, given down and acts caricaturing and vilifying the same ways "(Pulido Tirado, 2004: 425). More directly, Domínguez Leiva provide that:
"The metaphor is a need for baroque worldview, expressing the flight of the direct expression of the structures of simple, linear forms to the merger, unification of contradictory elements and expression a significant multivalency. "baroque poetics constantly seeks to inspire in the reader's surprise and wonder, translating the aspiration to express the hidden relationships between people and things, through a brilliant speech" [Quoted by Dominguez Leiva] (De Aguiar, VM, Theory of Literature, Madrid, Gredos, 1984, p. 293), being the metaphor at the core of this movement. The metaphor goes beyond the previously assigned location, proliferating in the text as they do in sculpture, architecture and painting of decorative elements prisoners a harrowing horror vacui "(Domínguez Leiva, 2004: 1221). In
Un Chien Andalou find a system of metaphors that refer to the baroque metaphor. Let us make reparation in allowing the film to arrive at an alternate reality: the eye cut, striped box, the hand with ants, butterfly with a skull tattooed on wings, and final image with the two protagonists buried in the sand. What sense does each of these metaphors? In relation to the narrative sequences of the film, we see that anticipate changes in stage-striped box and the butterfly-tattooed, announce events, the eye cut-and end-all narrative sequences the two protagonists buried in the sand. But little can be said about what they mean. Or at least not definitively, as more than one author has attempted to decode the "hieroglyphics." Its significance goes beyond the film, the eye crossed-instrumented by repetition, but still not content-striped box and the hand with ants, and are imposed its location in the narrative sequence, as a sort of counterpart of what is seen-the couple buried in the sand.
Under Baroque strategies to represent reality, we can say that these metaphors have the function of allowing building within a framework of images and sequences, an alternate reality to the ordinary. A set of images become symbols of something we do not know what it is. In that sense, coincides with the Baroque style where, as we know, stick the search for novelty and surprise, the taste for the difficulty associated with the idea that if nothing is stable, everything must be decoded, the trend artifice and ingenuity; the notion that the unfinished lies the supreme ideal of an artistic work.
expressionist light JF Scout provides an interesting distinction in cinematography from the use of light. It argues that American film-century early years ten and twenty-used "naturalistic effect poorly lit images, while the German film of the same year, we used" a nightmare effect, deliberately artificial and powerfully symbolic style "expressionist" to triumph in Germany, with a profusion of artificial light in the studies "(Scott, 1979: 131). Also, Domínguez Leiva pose that "Garmes (Lee) was inspired by the art rembrandtiana of" northern light "on the main light source always seemed to come from the north, creating the effect of fractionated light, diffused and balanced, free of great shadows. Garmes developed a vocabulary and lighting in "low key" that dominated in the study until the arrival of color. " (Domínguez Leiva, 2004: 1212).
This illumination "deliberately artificial and symbolic power, and lighting in" low key "dominate the staging of
Un Chien Andalou. Is denoted in the foreground of the film when we see the same Buñuel in the foreground (planes 2, 4, 7 and 9), lit piecemeal, with shadows (especially level 4), or in planes which occur in room of the protagonist, which produces that effect of light hole (plane 22, 23a, 23b, 23c ...) and also where you see a man in the street playing with a stick the severed hand (level 61, 62 and 63a). Even more grim, at the 117, when a plane angle shot shows the man's face with eyes, head up and visibly drooling.
Mounting Baroque With respect to the assembly, it should first refer the issues raised by Dominguez Leiva:
"From Griffith assembly constitutes the necessary and sufficient condition for the establishment aesthetics of cinema. As we stylistic oppositions noticed at other levels, film editing is torn between the pole narrative (meeting plans as a logical or chronological order to tell a story, each of which provides a factual content and contributes to progress the action from the point view as dramatic, the causality chain-o-psychological understanding the drama by the viewer) and another which we call expressive, and introduces elements barroquizantes. Expressive editing is based on juxtapositions of plans intended to produce a direct effect through the clash between two images, is intended to express itself a feeling or an idea, no longer a transparent medium for action and making in aesthetic purpose, producing at any time breaking effects in the viewer's mind. Here we find a profoundly dynamic baroque "(Domínguez Leiva, 2004: 1220).
In this context, we define the relation between" expressive editing, "Baroque- and
Un Chien Andalou. Indeed, in the film are "juxtaposed surfaces, as in the plano15a, where a main plane juxtaposes the image of cycling to the plane of himself in general, to be only in the main plane, through a process called "dissolve." The same happens in the plane 19 (and dissolve plane of the bicycle seen from behind), 21 (dissolve into the forefront of the box) and 42 (one box dissolve). And also on the sequence of the hand with ants, which dissolves through, ends up in a sea urchin (planes 58, 59a, 59b, 60a and 60b). The script for the film describes the latter sequence: underarm hair blown about a young woman lying on a sunny sandy beach. New cast on a sea urchin (Talens, 1986: 112). To this one might add the "breaking effects" produced by the eye-sectional (level 12), the appearance of dead donkey on a piano (level 141) and the Marist Brothers (level 145).
III. CONCLUSION Our approach to
Un Chien Andalou, related to the Baroque opens a problematic agenda, first, makes the relationship discussion of Un Chien Andalou with constructive principles of surrealism ascribing to the line of reasoning initiated by Jenaro Talens (Talens, Jena, 2000: 148 - 169). On the other hand, the open agenda relate the aesthetic demands of Un Chien Andalou with elements of the English tradition, from our point of view, with the baroque and neo-baroque. The latter leads us to believe more strongly in the aesthetic relationship of Buñuel and the Generation of 27 and, especially, with its ideologue, Ramón Gómez de la Serna. And finally, leads us to think about the relationship - a sort of "structures of thought," as Raymond Williams de
Un Chien Andalou within the Hispanic Baroque and neo-baroque, line of thought Sarduy, Roberto González Echevarría et al.