A Dog From Andalusia Visits The Upper West

Certain films in the so called canon of film art really do deserve all the praise they can get and Un chien andalou (1929) by Salvador Dalì and Luis Buñuel is one of them. If you've never seen this short masterwork, Gothamist can not recommend it enough. Heck, even if you have seen it, it's time to watch it again.

Fortunately for you, the film will screen tonight at the Walter Reade theater at Lincoln Center in the program "Golden Silents: Quatre Chiens," not once but four times. Accompanied by the Ensemble Sospeso, the film will be repeated four times, each time accompanied by a piece of music written by one of four different contemporary composers, Joshua Cody, Kirk Noreen, Wolfgang Rihm and Elliott Sharp. Tickets for the 8 pm show, which is a part of the Lincoln Center Festival 2004, are $15 for Film Society Members, $16 for students and $20 for the general public.

Fun story about Un chien — as a capper for the original screening of the surrealist film intended to confound and disturb its viewers at every turn what with eyeballs being sliced, ants crawling out of hands and no discernible linear narrative, the filmmakers hid behind the curtain with a bunch of rocks to heave at the already battered audience at its conclusion. However, when the viewers received the film so warmly, Buñuel and Dalì plum forgot to throw the rocks. After you've watched that famous eyeball sliced open a few times, you'll realize those viewers traded one kind of battery for another.