How Un Chien Andalou and L'Age D'or challenge conventional narratives through editing and cinematography

With reference to examples from both surrealist films you have studied, explain how cinematography and editing have been used to challenge conventional narratives. [15]

- Un Chien Andalou and L'Age D'or

Luis Bunuel in both Un Chien Andalou and L'Age D'or challenges conventional narrative approaches through the creation of an episodic, heavily symbolic, and ambiguous narrative achieved through the illogical and disruptive use of both cinematography and editing to explore thematic ideas rather than cohesive or practical storytelling.

With the surrealist intention to be an exploration of the unconscious mind, in theory accessed when dreaming, as supported by Freud's theory of psychoanalysis which fuelled Bunuel's ideology, the relationship between cinematography and editing is crucial in constructing thematic ideas relating to Freudian unconscious desires. In L'Age D'or this is created through juxtaposition, whereby documentary footage of scorpions killing a rat, captured in observational, overhead Close-ups, with extreme CU on their tails to emphasise their primal and violent instincts, is made the anchoring narrative idea of the film rather than as a Todorovian 'equilibrium', as this sequence is never explained or revisited in the film. The primal and animalistic connotations of the scorpions however mirror the primal instincts of the lovers as they tussle in mud, with similarly used close-ups, perhaps a Freudian display of the unconscious 'id'. Here, conventional uses of continuity editing is applied through match-on-action and reaction shots of the surrounding encoded (a Stuart Hall theory) bourgeoise to construct a Levi-Strauss opposition: sexual desire versus sexual repression, represented as the lovers are mercilessly torn apart. As the narrative thread of the film, editing is used later as the lovers are alluded to be desiring each other. Double exposure is used by the overlaying of the sky upon the woman's mirror as she gazes intently into it in a dreamlike image linking to the surrealist intention of capturing the irrational 'reality' of dreams, the scene cross-cutting to her detained lover. Sound bridges of cow-bells from the previous sequence continue to disrupt conventional cause-and-effect narrative approaches, as the cow being taken out of the woman's room is left unexplained and unresolved, the diegetic sound still present within the scene despite the cow's absence. 

In Un Chien Andalou, a conventional narrative structure is alluded to through the use of conventional continuity editing in the film's opening. A linear narrative with the impression of cause-and-effect is created through a series of shots: a man sharpens a blade, with undisruptive reaction and POV shots, before he goes outside onto a balcony to look at the moon. Security is established with the use of match-on-action in the two undisruptive long-shots of the man going through the door, and the low-key lighting constructs the night-time setting. Suddenly, the security of a conventional narrative is challenged as Bunuel cuts to a close-up of a woman's face, with the assumed man aligning his blade towards her eye; in a cut to the moon, the slicing of the woman's eye is foreshadowed through the Kuleshov effect of a thin cloud passing over the moon, this match cut disrupting the security of the scene in a graphic and illogical montage. Cause and effect is abandoned as the film - in the first of its unconventional episodic structure - as the setting and characters completely change in the following sequence and the exposited narrative is left unresolved. Unconventional editing is also used in the film through intertitles, used to confuse and disrupt the spectator rather than serve to expand the narrative as is the conventional function of titles. For example, the title, 'sixteen years later' is edited in-between a scene, the shot occurring as before in match-on-action after the title is shown. Freud's theory of 'free association' is also experimented in Un Chien Andalou through the match-cuts of underarm hair, crawling ants, and a sea urchin in a series of shots, connected through shot compositions giving the impression of a cohesive narrative idea despite being seemingly unconnected and illogical in the narrative, this perhaps used to stimulate active thoughts within the spectator and thus access the unconscious mind which ultimately was a goal of surrealism, another technique used by Bunuel to challenge conventional narrative approaches.