Surrealist Collection: LUIS BUÑUEL | 'Un Chien Andalou' (The Andalusian Dog), 8mm Film Print (ca. 60-70s)

By Victor 'Basura' Hernández.

This post was originally published in 'Basura Invaluable' on Thursday, January 22, 2015. The present version rescues almost nothing from the original text; it is mostly a new text. I have chosen to write a new entry upon finding a large number of changes I ended up making to the text, in order to correct and enrich the original information. Throughout this time, I have been able to find out more about the piece, in addition to replacing erroneous data with correct information. The images have also been optimized and cleaned, and new ones have been added, which I hope you find interesting.

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INTRODUCTION 

Tango Argentino by Vicente Alvarez & Carlos Otero et son orchestre (or His Tropical Orchestra)

Approaching a discussion about Luis Buñuel from a historical or biographical point of view would be redundant. There are already hundreds of authors who have written hundreds of books—some more recommendable than others—about his life and work (which is fascinating, to say the least). Buñuel is an inexhaustible source of interest, mystery, study, fascination, and inspiration for me and for thousands of others. His figure and authorial voice changed my life forever and, despite the passing of the years, of so many intellectual themes and passions that come and go, Buñuel remains, monumental and eternal.

Unlike a pathetic attempt to outline a simple monograph, we will be visiting key points in Buñuel's career, but through the memorabilia that makes up the museum's collection. We will navigate, chronologically, through Buñuel's filmography as extensively as the collection allows us. We begin here with this first entry, which takes us to the very start of Buñuel's film career in 1929, with his revolutionary Surrealist short film: Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog), written by him and his then-close friend Salvador Dalí. The film's official premiere date was June 6, 1929, at the Studio des Ursulines cinema in Paris, France. From that first screening, the film became a legend—a monster of cult, scandal, and admiration, a film whose consequences are now counted by the hundreds in the annals of history.

A MYSTERIOUS 8MM COPY

In 2014, while browsing through eBay, fantasizing about the day I could buy all the collectibles of my dreams without first having to do infinite mental calculations and other mathematical acrobatics, I stumbled upon a very interesting auction: it was an 8mm copy of 'Un Chien Andalou'. It said nothing more. I bid. What did I have to lose? The opposite turned out to be true, because, to my surprise, the collector's god smiled upon me that day since my ridiculously low bid was the winning one. About three to four weeks must have passed when the mailman knocked on my door with my long-awaited purchase (tax-free, by the way. What times).

I had in my hands a copy of the film in perfect condition, yet its origins and provenance were still a mystery to me. At that time, with the little information available online and on the even scarcer specialized sites for antique film material brands, I could only find the manufacturers responsible for the can: Goldberg Brothers. Founded in 1897, it became a leading manufacturer of reels (spools) and cans (canisters) of high-quality film for professional cinema (35mm) and, later, for home formats like 8mm (Standard 8 and Super 8). They are not content distributors. It is crucial to understand that, generally, Goldberg Brothers manufactured the container (the can and, sometimes, the reel), but they were not the company that duplicated or distributed the film content itself. The can only indicates the manufacturer of that component.

This was, for a long time, the only certain answer I had regarding the copy. However, when rereading the original 2015 entry, I surprised myself with a piece of information I had recorded and completely forgotten. It seems that, at some point in the transaction, I contacted the seller to ask more about the film's provenance, to which they could only reply that it had been manufactured in France in the 60s. But then, what was a French copy of Un Chien Andalou doing in the United States?

CONNECTING THE DOTS

Now, thanks to the recent modern assistance offered by AI, I have taken an exhaustive deep dive again, leveraging the search power offered by these tools. Considering the purely physical characteristics of the copy, without examining the film yet, I have been able to conclude that it is an archive copy, either from an institution (laboratory, museum, university, cinematheque) or from a serious private collection. The absence of commercial packaging and proper labeling completely rules out its possible mass commercialization. It is worth mentioning here that the film was commercially distributed in the United States by one of the most important distributors, redundantly, during the boom decades of home movie film (60s-70s): Thunderbird Films. For a moment, I thought the copy, coming from the US, would be related to the legendary distributor. However, upon analyzing the little, but sufficient, available information on the Thunderbird edition, I have been able to rule it out completely, as that version is sound and our copy is completely silent.

The film's official sonorization did not take place until 1960 by Les Grands Films Classiques, but it was supervised and directed by Luis Buñuel himself. In its original screenings in 1929, the film was shown completely silent, and it was Buñuel himself, or someone under his direction, who accompanied the screening with music played on a phonograph. The memorable soundtrack that we all know: the Tango Argentino (which you can play and enjoy further up in the text) and parts of Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde, were added and synchronized for this version, which is the way the film has been exhibited worldwide ever since. I was very surprised to realize that the copy I had in my hands was totally silent, as there is another key piece of information that does not match this characteristic: the film's brand.

Upon examining the first few centimeters of the film, I could find the markings AGFA GEVAERT 2S. Agfa Gevaert is a Belgian-German multinational company specialized in image technology and, in this case, responsible for the manufacturing of the film in our copy. The Agfa and Gevaert companies did not merge (giving birth to the aforementioned Agfa-Gevaert) until 1964, so we can then assure that the copy in question could not have existed until, at least, that year or the following year, 1965. It is curious, then, that even though the sonorized and officially considered version of the film was already in existence, completely silent copies were still being printed. Regarding the '2S' nomenclature, I could not yet find an answer to its meaning.

In the following gallery, you can appreciate some close-ups of the film. The absence of the audio track is more than clear. I regret not having taken better photographs; I managed to get these with difficulty and achieved the close-ups using a trick I know with an additional camera lens. Unfortunately, the focus relies entirely on my eye and steady hand. In the end, these were the ones I liked the most; I hope you find them interesting:

LE CHIEN ANDALOU?

The most observant among you have surely already noticed this last inconsistency, which only throws more doubt on the copy's origin. According to the seller in that lost message from 2014, the copy had been manufactured in France. The film, branded Agfa Gevaert, also corresponds to another sign that the copy could indeed have been manufactured in Europe. And finally, we can confirm that, at least in that era, it was Les Grands Films Classiques who held the distribution rights to the film and had just carried out the official sonorization of it. All this information places France as the epicenter, the origin.

However, if all the evidence points to it being very possible that the copy could have been part of a laboratory or cinematheque, which would mean its origin must have been from an official and original master, and concluding with the alleged fact that confirms its French manufacture, why then the error in the title? In French, changing the article from "Un" (a, an | Un Chien Andalou) to "Le" (the | Le Chien Andalou) completely changes the nuance

• Correct Title: Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) — Reflects the indefinite, the dreamlike, and the universal nature of Surrealism. It is any dog, an image from a dream.

• Erroneous Title: Le Chien Andalou (The Andalusian Dog) — Gives it a definite and specific meaning that sounds very foreign to the intention of Buñuel and Dalí.

I searched profusely for information and hundreds of versions of the film on the Internet, trying to find a version that met at least one of these characteristics: 1. That the opening title card was different from the original, 2. That it was translated into English, or 3. That it was also printed with the erroneous alternative title of 'Le Chien Andalou'. My search yielded only one alternative result to the original version and the version of our copy. It is another 8mm copy, of completely unknown provenance and characteristics, with a correct title but with a completely different typography from the original:

Alternative unknown 8mm copy | The title is correct 'Un Chien Andalou', the typography differs from that used in the original film. 

Left: Original film title | Right: Erroneous title of our copy, 'Le Chien Andalou'.

The error thus becomes incomprehensible and unjustifiable if we consider that the copy was supposedly made in France. I understand that a non-Francophone could make such a mistake, but a Frenchman? It is less probable. To spice up this investigative tongue-twister, the copy culminates our confusion by also showing intertitles in English—so where on earth did this copy come from?

FINAL THOUGHTS

By this point, the search has led me through so many paths and passages that I have to admit I am now incredulous. The copy shows clear signs that suggest very possible time periods and places of manufacture; however, it does not explain the strange nature of the content. I believe the following combination is what turns this copy into a true mystery:

1. The fact that it came from the United States and is canned with materials from an American company: Was the copy perhaps destined for the English audience, and an American brought it to the US, canned and labeled it with American products? Or is it a copy that is in English because it was conceived from the beginning for the American audience? But, if so, why would it be manufactured with European film—from Agfa Gevaert—if in the US there was a large market of the best quality to acquire the material and manufacture it?

2. Why is the title misspelled? This speaks to an endless number of possibilities in the copying process, and we can never know where the first error was made. Was it perhaps a pirate distributor who bought a copy of the film and made its own version, making that error in the title? Or is it a laboratory copy or from an institution that thought it had an official, or at least authorized, copy of the film? If so, in which country? Were they British pirates or American pirates?

My preliminary conclusion, until more information is found, is that this is a pirate copy. Printed without sound precisely to keep production costs very low and, thinking about it, it is most likely European piracy that was exported to various parts of the world. This group of pirates were surely the ones who translated the film, probably into several languages, and sold it to collectors and cinephiles eager to possess these extremely rare and almost never exhibited films in those eras.

The next step in the search will be to achieve a scan of the copy, which we will be publishing and documenting right here as soon as we can carry it out. If you know anything else about this copy, or have seen a similar one, please do not hesitate to let us know. Any additional information will be of great help and very welcome.

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I am very grateful to those who provided me with information to enrich this text, and above all, I am grateful to those who take the time to read and appreciate it in its entirety. This little work is for you, done with great pleasure and care.

I'll sign off for today, but not before reminding you that if you're as passionate about collectibles as we are, you should definitely check out our online store, where you’ll find a beautiful selection of pieces that are sure to be very interesting and valuable for your collection. Until next time!