I’ve spent over an hour of my precious life viewing two important Luis Buñuel films: the 1929 short film Un Chien Andalou, and the hour-long classic L’Age d’Or. The former film was a collaboration between Buñuel and Salvador Dali, who intended the piece to anger the young bourgeoisie, but to their horror, one cannot easily insult the artful elite, as Buñuel exclaimed, when they like anything new, even if it’s meant to destroy the pillars on which they stand.

Said simpler, when one builds a house of shit, it’s hard to add smells that will offend the neighbors.

The latter film was meant, I suppose, to actually be good. Or terrible. To that end, here are the two Buñuel classics, the latter produced without input from Dali during actual filming, as by then he and his colleague had fallen out over Buñuel’s love of leftist dictators, in dire opposition to Dali’s sitting firmly in the lap of rightist fascists. (Figuratively sepaking, of course. I’m not sure Franco went for that sort of thing.) . L’Age d’Or was banned for some time because it’s shit due to riots at its debut and it’s non-sequitur ending which apparently disparaged the Catholic Church and some Mexican dude named Jesus. Or something. I didn’t get it, to be honest.

Anyway, if you have an hour and ninteen minutes of life to spare, take a look at both films and tell me what you think. I tend not to be as artsy as some artsy folks, so I’m far more likely to laugh at Richard Pryor than Shakespeare, so I’ll try to keep my two cents out of it. I do wonder, are these brilliant or bollocks? Let me know.

Warning, the first film has some very disturbing images right at the start, involving an eye and a razor. I was shocked into almost waking up.