It was considered so inflammatory and socialist it was banned by the BBFC in 1926, and only granted an 'X' rating in 1954 after Stalin's death. Sergei Eisenstein's opus is one of the cornerstones of cinema, but for many years you couldn't see it in the UK. Universal History Archive // Getty Images It's extraordinarily rich and visually intoxicating see the opening one-shot sequence where the killer sets the time bomb, and the camera sweeps around town, letting the tension gradually tick and tock up and up. But the version which finally saw the light of day in 1998 – reworked by The Godfather and Apocalypse Now editor Walter Murch – sticks to what Welles wanted, and turned it into the movie it could have been. Welles' vision was hacked about by four different editors, and reshoots and extra scenes were forced upon him by the studio. Welles ended up helping with the script too, and wanted to make a thriller which didn't let up for a second: a taut, riveting thing which melded his visionary instincts with pop clout. Welles signed on to direct and star alongside Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh in the story of a special prosecutor who's trying to enjoy his honeymoon when an assassination by time bomb brings him back to the day job. Open the way to the irrational." You can imagine the David Lynch and David Cronenburg making notes.įor decades this was one of the great lost Hollywood classics. They had one rule, Buñuel said: "Do not dwell on what required purely rational, psychological or cultural explanations. It all came together Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel had lunch one day and compared dreams: the moon appearing to be sliced open by a cloud a hand reaching around a door, covered in ants. But it is one of the most viscerally, disorientatingly thrilling 21 minutes you're ever likely to spend in front of the TV a stream of surreal, disturbing, prophetic, rich images and sensations which look like they might mean everything but which its makers always insisted meant nothing beyond what they made you feel. It's not a tightly plotted cat-and-mouse game with one or another of Gene Hackman, Al Pacino or Harrison Ford in it. It isn't a thriller in the Hitchcockian sense – or, indeed, in most other senses. Now, Un Chien Andalou isn't the kind of thriller you'll be able to idly Google an ending explainer for after the credits have rolled.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |