Surrealist cinema

Theory

Surrealism draws upon irrational imagery and the subconscious mind. Surrealists are sometimes mistaken as whimsical or incapable of logical thought.

Michael Richardson defined Surrealism in his book Surrealism and Cinema (2006) as "a shifting point of magnetism around which the collective activity of the surrealists revolves" instead of a fixed aesthetic, and argued that Surrealist works cannot be defined by style or form, but rather as results of the practice of Surrealism itself. He wrote:

History

Surrealism was the first literary and artistic movement to become seriously associated with cinema, though it has also been largely neglected by film critics and historians. Short-lived as its initial popularity was, it became known for its dreamlike quality; juxtaposition of everyday people and objects in irrational forms; and the abstraction of real life, places, and things. Highly influenced by Freudian psychology, Surrealism sought to bring the unconscious mind to visual life, described by Gina Marie Ezzone as "balanced between symbolism and realism, Surrealist cinema commentated on themes of life, death, modernity, politics, religion, and art itself".

The foundations of the movement began in Paris and coincided with the birth of motion pictures. France served as the birthplace of surrealist cinema due to a fortunate combination of easy access to film equipment, film financing, and a plethora of interested artists and audiences. The Surrealists who participated in the movement were among the first generation to have grown up with film as a part of daily life.

Breton himself, even before the launching of the movement, possessed an avid interest in film; while stationed in Nantes during the First World War, he and his superior Jacques Vaché would frequent the movie houses together in their spare time. According to Breton, they ignored film titles and lengths, preferring to drop in at any given moment and view the films without any foreknowledge. When they grew bored, they left and visited the next theater. Breton's movie-going habits supplied him with a stream of images with no constructed order. He could juxtapose the images of one film with those of another, and craft his own interpretation from this experience.

Breton once remarked of his experiences with Vaché, "I think what we [valued] most in it, to the point of taking no interest in anything else, was its power to disorient." Film critic René Gardies wrote in 1968, "Now the cinema is, quite naturally, the privileged instrument for derealising the world. Its technical resources, allied with its photo-magic, provide the alchemical tools for transforming reality."

Surrealist artists were interested in cinema as a medium for expression. Surrealists realized that the film camera could capture the real world in a dreamlike way that pens and paintbrushes could not: superimpositions, overexposure, fast motion, slow motion, reverse motion, stop motion, lens flares, widely varying depths of field, and more bizarre camera tricks could transform the original image in front of the lens into something new once exposed on the film plate.

For surrealists, film gave them the ability to challenge and mold the boundaries between fantasy and reality, especially in regard to space and time. Like the dreams they wished to bring to life, film had no limits or rules. Cinema provided more convincing illusions than its closest rival, theatre, and the tendency for Surrealists to express themselves through film was a sign of their confidence in the adaptability of cinema to Surrealism's goals and requirements. They were the first to seriously consider the resemblance between film's imaginary images and those of dreams and the unconscious. Luis Buñuel, whose filmmaking technique has been widely studied, said that "the film seems to be the involuntary imitation of the dream".

Surrealist filmmakers sought to redefine human awareness of reality by illustrating that the "real" was little more than what was perceived as real, and that reality was only constrained by the limits people imposed upon it. Breton once compared the experience of Surrealist literature to "the point at which the waking state joins sleep". His analogy helps to explain the advantage of cinema over books in facilitating the kind of release Surrealists sought from their daily pressures. The modernity of film was also appealing to Surrealists.

Critics have debated whether surrealist cinema is a distinct genre; as recognition of a genre involves the ability to cite many works that share thematic, formal, and stylistic traits, referring to Surrealism as a genre implies that there is repetition of elements and a recognizable, generic formula which describes them. Several critics have thus argued that Surrealism's use of non sequiturs and the irrational make it impossible for it to constitute a genre.

While there are numerous films which are true expressions of the movement, many other films which have been classified as Surrealist simply contain Surrealist fragments. Rather than "Surrealist film", the more accurate term for such works may be "Surrealism in film".

Surrealist films and filmmakers

Early works

• Entr'acte: a 22-minute silent French film, written by René Clair and Francis Picabia, and directed by Clair, released December 4, 1924.
• The Seashell and the Clergyman: a 31-minute silent film, written by Antonin Artaud, and directed by Germaine Dulac, released in February 1928.
• L'Étoile de mer: a 15-minute silent French film, written and directed by Man Ray, released in 1928.
• Un Chien Andalou: a 21-minute silent French film, written by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, and directed by Buñuel, released in 1929.
• Les Mystères du Château du Dé: a 27-minute silent French film, written and directed by Man Ray, released in 1929.
• L'Age d'Or: a 60-minute French film with sound, written by Dalí and Buñuel, and directed by Buñuel, released in 1930.

Later works

Joseph Cornell produced surrealist films in the United States in the late 1930s, such as Rose Hobart (1936). Antonin Artaud, Philippe Soupault, and Robert Desnos wrote screenplays for later surrealist films.

Salvador Dalí designed a dream sequence for Alfred Hitchcock's film Spellbound (1945), which was one of the first Hollywood films to use psychoanalysis as a major element of the story. Hitchcock wanted to capture the vividness of dreams as never before and felt that Dalí was the person to help him do so, giving Dalí free rein to bring to the screen an innovative vision of the way dreams could be represented.

Maya Deren made numerous silent short films, among them the renowned Meshes of the Afternoon, replete with surreal, dreamlike scenes and encounters. Jan Švankmajer was a member of the Czech Surrealist Group. In 1946, Dalí and Walt Disney began work on a film called Destino, which was finally finished in 2003.

Many of David Lynch's films, such as Eraserhead (1977), Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (2001), and Inland Empire (2006), as well as his television series Twin Peaks (19901991; 2017), are widely considered surrealist. Another prominent example is Charlie Kaufman with films including Being John Malkovich (1999), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Synecdoche, New York (2008), Anomalisa (2015), and I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020). Due to their influence and impact on popular culture, the careers of Lynch and Kaufman could be seen as the closest that surrealist cinema has come to achieving widespread mainstream recognition.

Other directors whose films have been considered surrealist include Fernando Arrabal, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Stephen Sayadian, and Brian Patrick Butler.

References

References

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2. (1993). "Conversations: The Autobiography of Surrealism". Paragon House.
3. As agreed by interviewer and interviewee. Breton and Parinaud, 71
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19. [[Meshes of the Afternoon]]
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