![]() ![]() The clergyman tries to destroy this imperious father-figure, but his attempts are futile, and the slow-motion scenes of the clergyman trying impotently to strangle him are among the most disturbing in the film. The clergyman is thwarted by an older, more powerful man, who appears in the dream at times as his superior in the priesthood, or as a sword-bearing general. The film recreates the nightmare of a young clergyman and his repressed sexual desire for a beautiful, aristocratic woman (played by Genica Athanasiou, a former lover of Artaud's). Artaud would later be expelled from the Surrealist movement by Breton, who objected to Artaud's drug-use, which to Breton was an inauthentic way of attaining the oneiric or revelatory state. In 1927-28, Artaud was still affiliated with the official Surrealist movement as Director of the "Bureau of Surrealist Research," a small office in Paris where the general public could submit accounts of their dreams and surreal experiences. As an actor, he is perhaps best remembered for his role as a sympathetic priest in Carl Dreyer's classic film, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). Antonin Artaud was an actor, poet, and dramatist, and one of the most important figures in modern theater. Dulac was a persuasive writer on cinema theory and declared the independence of film from literature and other visual arts. The Seashell and The Clergyman was a major departure from her established style. Many of her films are also psychological portraits, such as Spanish Fiesta (1920) and The Smiling Madame Beudet (1923). ![]() Dulac was already a successful and innovative filmmaker, best known for the way in which her early films set moods through atmospheric camera shots, reminiscent of French Impressionist paintings. ![]() 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. Unlike Surrealist poetry, which ultimately could only create abstract linguistic metaphor, Surrealist film could show even the most incongruous or absurd images as visual, concrete facts.This love or desire, while appearing self-destructive or illogical to the rational world, leads characters in surrealist films - and viewers in real life - to realizations they may not have otherwise had. Many surrealist films are driven by strong feelings of longing, love, and sexual desire, what the founder of Surrealism, André Breton called "insane love," amour fou. #TORMENTED SOULS KEY DIAL FULL#Surrealist films often assault traditional institutions in society, such as religion, family, or marriage, exemplified in Luis Buñuel's attacks on the Catholic Church or David Lynch's depiction of a married couple with a deformed child, thus changing a traditional mode of mass entertainment into one full of revolutionary potential at the social and political level.Surrealist film attempts to change cinema so that audiences experience more than the standard visuals. This challenges the notion of cinema as mere entertainment the viewer can no longer be passive or complaisant. Surrealist films often use shocking imagery that jolts the viewer, imagery that had not been seen in films prior to 1928.There is a forfeiting of control and a complete submission to the dream state. As in actual dreams, characters in Surrealist films display a lack of will, even a certain impotence. Like dreams, many Surrealist films resist interpretation. Surrealist filmmakers found new techniques to convey the atmosphere and incongruous states of dreams. Surrealist films do not merely retell dreams or stories but replicate their very processes through illogical, irrational disruptions and disturbing imagery, uncensored by normal wakeful consciousness or morality.Surrealism creates the possibility of cinema itself as an independent and unique visual art form. Surrealist films created a revolution in cinema by dispensing with linear narratives and plots, thereby freeing cinema from a reliance on traditional story-telling borrowed from literature. ![]()
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