Educational Media Reviews Online

Surrealism, as an art concept is relatively clear, but it has unfortunately suffered from contemporary misuse and misunderstanding. Surrealist Film: The Stuff of Dreams attempts to contextualize the movement within the filmic avant-garde of the first third of the 20th century and to relate it to more contemporary films and directors. It is thus a very basic primer about the films and the period, and as such, is not able, in its relatively short running time of 39 minutes, to delve deeper into the inter-relatedness and intertextuality of the avant-garde or do more than show some brief sections of films without more than passing discussion. However, its intent is to act primarily as an introduction to surrealism in film and this it does accomplish successfully.

French film culture gave rise to the emergence of a number of schools of avant-garde filmmaking in the 1920s. Nevertheless, the avant-garde was alive and well almost fifty years earlier with the emergence of impressionism in art. Montmartre was then ripe with the repercussions of the modern as it related to literature, theatre, and the arts. Thus, with the proliferation of film at the beginning of the 20th century, the circumstances became right for independence from commercial filmmaking. This DVD is a little loose about defining the birth of surrealism, stating that it occurred a century ago, which would incorrectly place it in 1905 but I would suspect that the narrated text was in reference to a general sense of “avant-garde” rather than “surrealism” specifically. There is only passing mention of the several different factions of the avant-garde co-existing in France with many filmmakers changing course several times during their career. Germaine Dulac, one the important impressionist filmmakers went on to make an early surrealist film, La Coquille et le clergyman, in 1928. Independent directors like Abel Gance and Jean Epstein strove for a type of pure cinema developing its own cinematic syntax like superimpositions and soft focus whereas the surrealists ended up operating within spatial and temporal conventions of narrative cinema but in a manner that subverted them. It was also not unusual that as quickly as artists would be thrown into the surrealist group, they could just as easily be thrown out. The DVD’s organization of ideas and narration do not immediately clarify this co-existence or issues posed as problematic, and in fact several voice-over narrated statements add to the usual confusion associated with understanding Surrealism and its relationship with film. The program begins by stating that Un chien andalou is the first and most authentic surrealist film and goes on to later discuss the earlier Entr’acte as if it were a surrealist film (which in many ways it was) as well as La Coquille et le clergyman andL’Etoile de mer, both also made before Un chien andalou without the much needed clarification.

Beginning with the establishment of Dada, Surrealism’s precursor, the program examines the work of several artists to illustrate their aim to destroy artistic conventions, one of the characteristics of the Dada movement. Marcel Duchamp’s Mona Lisa with the mustache and goatee is shown as an example without further discussion about its title which was “LHOOQ.” If the letters are pronounced in French, they sound like a translation of “Her ass is hot.” Knowing this added information would have added a supplementary dimension to the piece as would knowing that this dada act of destruction takes on a more important meaning since it essentially thumbs its nose at an earlier attempt to disfigure the Mona Lisa: Eugene Bataille did a photo-relief illustration in 1887 called Mona Lisa with a Pipe. He was part of a bohemian artist group known as the Hydropathes whose output and aesthetics were characterized as fundamental skepticism and smugness, anticipating the birth of Dada almost 30 years later.

The program then goes on to examine how Dada gave way to Surrealism in 1924 with the publication of the Surrealist Manifesto. An important feature of Surrealism is its sensibility and the program touches only momentarily on some aspects of it. The surrealists were interested in black humor. André Breton, one of its founders and author of the Manifesto, compiled an anthology of black humor. One point that should have been elaborated is that the surrealists were film-goers before they became filmmakers. They actually enjoyed bad films and often went to see American serials to catch some bizarre chance happening. They would habitually see several films in one outing, arriving at random times and combining the total viewing into one cinematic experience. This process is actually incorporated into Luis Bunuel’s L’Age d’or, where the film starts as a documentary on scorpions then suddenly goes on as a narrative film and just as suddenly another narrative film begins. There is a brief mention of the Comte de Noailles, a patron of the avant-garde who financed Man Ray’s Le Mystère du chateau du dé, and L’Age d’or as well as Jean Cocteau’s Le Sang d’un poète. Without any elucidation, Jean Cocteau’s Blood of a Poet (Le Sang d’un poète) could be viewed as a surrealist film because its imagery appears to have many common themes with the most famous surrealist film, Bunuel and Dali’s Un Chien andalou, but Cocteau was not considered a surrealist by the surrealists as they had had several famous fallings out. This information could have been mentioned as a means of clarification in the program since Cocteau was brought up albeit in a sentence.

The program’s narration is too indecisive in expressing that surrealism as an art movement was dead by World War II. Certain ideas carried over into the 1950s at which point the ideas had been reworked in such a way that they barely resembled those of the 1920s. The word ‘’surrealism’’ today has regrettably become a qualifier for any kind of dream-like imagery, whether in music videos or advertising. Just as a streamlined piece of furniture designed and manufactured today is not art deco, but in the style of art deco, films by contemporary directors like David Lynch are not surrealist, but may simply evoke some aspect of the movement. This was hinted in an opaque manner and could have been more definitively stated.

Surrealist Film: The Stuff of Dreams is perhaps a bit overambitious in its scope as it brings up ideas without taking them adequately through, but as a teaching tool in high school or introductory college level, it works because it allows the instructor to fill in the blanks and explain the areas that need elaboration. Recommended as a basic primer for film studies and art history.

I would add that in addition to this DVD it would be essential for students to watch some of the films quoted through clips and most are available on DVD. Anemic Cinema, Ballet mecanique, La Coquille et le clergyman, Emak-Bakia, and L’Étoile de mer are all available on the recently released Kino Video two-DVD set entitled, Avant-garde Experimental Cinema in the 1920s and 30s. Kino also distributes L’Age d’or on DVD, and Un chien andalou is available on DVD from Transflux Films as well as a double feature with Las Hurdes from Kino.