And though Surrealist paintings could depict dream-like scenes, they were still single, frozen illusions, while Surrealist cinema could show actual objects in motion, as they move in dreams, the paradoxical realism of Surrealism.ĭirected by Germaine Dulac from a screenplay by Antonin Artaud, The Seashell and the Clergyman is considered by most critics to be the first true Surrealist film. It could show the marvelous or uncanny as real-the material strangeness of reality.
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Surrealist filmmakers found new techniques to convey the atmosphere and incongruous states of dreams.
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The movie screen becomes a portal through which the viewer can journey where the traditional common constructs can no longer be reliable guides, from a clergyman's sexual dreams to a poet's quest through a mirror, from an obsession with a starfish to a wound that emits live ants.
Surrealist films often leave us with shocking images that lodge themselves into our psyche and deprive us of easily legible narratives, while at the same time prove compelling in their deep, ultimately neo-romantic expressions of desire.
Surrealism revolutionized the art of cinema with new techniques and approaches that freed it from traditional story-telling, transforming the medium into one that could explore, reveal, and possibly even replicate the inner-workings of the subconscious mind.