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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 0738329037130 Format: Black & White, Subtitled, NTSC Label: Kino Video Manufacturer: Kino Video Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Kino Video Release Date: January 09, 2001 Running Time: 43 minutes Sales Rank: 18198 Studio: Kino Video Theatrical Release Date: 2028
Rating: - Somewhat interesting, if dated - and polemical
This tape includes two very different pieces from Buñuel (directed at not too distant time from each other, the late 1920s and the early 1930s). The first is Un Chien Andalou, which is credited as being codirected by Salvador Dali. This surreal short must have been terribly shocking when it was made, but I think that more than 75 years later, a lot of its impact has softened, perhaps because its surreal tricks have appeared in a lot of later movies.
The second piece is flawed too, though at least is more interesting - and I think more polemical, also. It's a 30 minute documentary about life ... Read More
Rating: - Las Hurdes is absolutely shocking
I just watched Land Without Bread, or Las Hurdes, the only documentary directed by Luis Bunuel. The film is short, only 27 minutes, but it is long enough to portray enough human suffering to disgust. Images include a girl who lies in a road for two days and then dies. No one helps. The local schoolteacher instructs rows upon rows of malnourished children to respect the property of others. The schoolteacher feeds them bread, and makes them eat it immediately to keep their starving parents from taking it from them. They dip it into the only nearby source of water, a trickle running through a ditch where ... Read More
Rating: - Groundbreaking, but no masterpiece
Recently, I purchased and viewed my first Luis Bunuel film, Los Olvidados (The Young and the Damned). The film is very good, including some incredibly poignant and unforgettable images. I then decided to purchase and view one of his earlier works, likewise considered a masterpiece of film, Un Chien Andalou/Land Without Bread. This is awful. A mish-mash of mush! Its only redeeming quality is its brevity. Once again, here we have a film that is given much more credit than it deserves, and I'm starting to think that the reason this often happens is that: a) the movies are old and therefore deserve respect ... Read More
Rating: - 'Land Without Bread' might be Bunuel's masterpiece
'Un chien andalou' (1928) is the best-known film on this video and is a fascinating work in its own right, but the real masterpiece here is undoubtedly 'Land Without Bread' ('Las Hurdes'). As great as most of Bunuel's subsequent films would be, this 27-minute 1932 work arguably towers above them all. Calling it a documentary would not do justice to its unrivaled breadth: among other things, this film asks the questions 'what is a documentary?' and 'what is the role of the documentarist?', and this prevents us from using definitive, short-circuiting labels. In fact, no label could conceivably express this ... Read More
Rating: - At one time
I find these films interesting for their period statements. At one time Un Chien Andalou was a statement about nothing. It is now, however, an exploration into metaphor that we never could never leave undiscovered. People may think they remain the same but their symbols are reused with new interpretations. This movie is like lost love rediscovered, forgetting the reason for the loss.
Land Without Bread is such a racist, bigoted statement that it boggles the mind. Imagine a time when some human existence could be so distant that it was judged only appropriate for a carny sideshow. This movie ... Read More
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