The point of madness: surrealist cinema’s struggle for survival
Alexander Lewis
‘I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality.’
- André Breton
André Breton’s revolutionary vision for Surrealism was never real ized in his lifetime. Surrealists believed that through automatism and liberating the unconscious mind, they could form a more empathetic society. By viewing surrealist art, literature or cinema with its dream-like and hallucinatory qualities, one could gain a window into the artist’s unconscious mind, and looking at life from another person’s unfiltered perspectives in this way, one could acquire a new advanced form of empathy, and fresh perspectives on major issues. Surrealism in Breton’s lifetime realized only one half of his hope, and in that achieved very little. Since the birth of Surrealism, it has transcended various mediums and disciplines, from comedy and music to the more famous surrealist cinema, art, and literature. In the origins of Surrealism, the key med iums were art and literature, with works such as Max Ernst’s The Elephant Celebes and Breton’s automatist book Les Champs magnétiques . These media had a number of advantages for early surrealists, primarily in their accessibility to creators in only needing a pen and paper, and their suitability to the automatism practised by many surrealists. However, they also had some disadvantages. Literature and Art were to many consumers inaccessible genres, particularly the working class who would be key in the Marxist revolution that Surrealism supported, if it was to ever succeed. As well as their perceived inaccessibility, they also had a far smaller potential audience, as the distribution of art and literature was far more limited. These disadvantages were where Surrealist cinema could thrive. Through film cameras, surrealists could capture a surreal image in a more authoritative and ‘real’ way, through camera techniques such as superimpositions, overexposures, accelerating or decelerating footage: they could create novel images whichmaintained a photographic quality making it difficult to decipher the real from the surreal. Early surrealist filmmakers such as Luis Buñuel and Jean Epstein realized that the camera could capture the dream-like quality of their vision while maintaining the façade of an unquestionable reality. Themost important landmark for surrealist cinema was the release of Un Chien Andalou in 1929. The film’s creators, Buñuel and Dalí , used shocking imagery such as the slicing of a woman’s iris with a razor and the film’s non -existent narrative in an effort to provoke and agitate the avant- garde bourgeoisie of the Parisian art elite. The film’s creation process was essentially the strin ging together of Buñuel’s and Dalí’s dreams and only had one rule: ‘no idea or image which might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.’ The filmwas a huge success, eliciting great praise from the very people it sought to ins ult, and earning its creators entry to Breton’s close-knit group of s urrealists. However, despite the film’s spreading the surrealist style and
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