Un Chien Andalou (1929)
There are very few films from the silent period that have imagery so vivid that even people with a casual interest in films are aware of them. Fritz Lang's Maria robot from Metropolis is one. I'd argue that the Odessa Steps sequence from Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin is one also. But probably the most shocking and arresting scene of all silent cinema is to be found in 1929's Un Chien Andalou ( An Andalusian Dog ), which was the first of two Surrealist films to come from the collaboration between director Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. The scene itself is the first scene in the 16-minute film. A man (played by Buñuel) is seen sharpening a cutthroat razor on leather. He walks out onto a balcony, his face surrounded by Gauloise smoke. He looks up to the night sky moon and sees the bright moon about to be pierced by a thin cloud. We then cut to a closeup of a woman, her left eye being held open by the man. The scene goes back to the moon as the cloud cuts into i...