In the beginning of the film the viewer is presented with perhaps the most revolting and visually shocking image; an eyeball being sliced open by a razor blade. Instinctively the viewer recoils from this shot. Upon careful inspection of the sequence we see that it sets up the first and most obvious of the analogies of the film. It associates the full moon and the clouds passing through it with the eyeball and the razor blade respectively. The cross-cut nature of the sequence, from the cutting of the moon by the clouds to the slicing of the eye, suggests that the latter is only happening in the man's mind by way of suggestion. The contrast of the light-hearted music also belies the reality of this gruesome image. Similarly there is no reaction from the woman, nor is there blood. We see instead egg white flowing from a freshly cut egg occupying her eye socket. The viewer is shown in this brief sequence that cutting, in both the filmic and the literal sense will distort the eyes and perhaps make them incapable of spotting what is real.
The viewer's growing suspicion of his/her eyes is confirmed by the characters of the film. There is a sequence where the man's eyes roll up into his head while he is fondling the breasts of the woman through her blouse. Over the period in which he is holding them, the breasts transform, in the frame, from clothed to naked to bare buttocks and back to the clothed woman. This sequence is intercut with a shot of the man from the woman's perspective that is quite disturbing. It is a close-up that shows his head tilted slightly back with only the whites of his eyeballs showing and with blood running out the sides of his half-open mouth. Like the previously mentioned sequence this is not pleasant to look at. Following Freud's advice on the importance of delving into the most disturbing parts of a dream, we shall inspect this sequence as well. First the image of upturned eyes suggests unconsciousness and physically they suggest introspection because they are looking into his own head. The shots of the body parts that follow are then associated with the inside of the man's head, i.e., his fantasies; he is dreaming within a dream. Similarly the vampire-like image of the man is the woman's projection of him in her head, as we see no blood on his face at the end of this sequence.
The final appearance of the eye figure and perhaps the most disturbing visual statement on eyes suggests that the denial or removal of vision is comparable to the denial of life or the prescription for death. This is the image of the two dead cows being dragged on the pianos, their eye sockets bleeding from having been gouged out. They, like the viewer, are being dragged through this dream and they too can no longer rely on their eyes for vision but they, unlike the viewer, are dead.
At this point the viewer is stumped no matter whose perspective s/he wishes to take. Taken together they provide at best a fragmented picture. A dream really is a fragmented story with many levels and perspectives of interpretation as Freud has shown. Likewise there are many layers to ÒUn Chien Andalou." The significant role that the eye figure performs in linking the viewer with the various elements of the film: characters, props, make it into an important program that can be analyzed at all layers of this dream-film.