SURREALISM

Key Surrealist Films:

• The first Surrealist film usually considered to be The Seashell and the Clergyman from 1928, directed by Germaine Dulac.
• Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou, in collaboration with Salvador Dalí, in 1929.
• Dalí collaborated with Buñuel again on L’Age D’Or in 1930,
• Dalí was later hired by Alfred Hitchcock to create a Surrealist dream sequence in Spellbound (1945).
• Some consider Luis Bunuel to be the only genuiely surrealist film maker.

Contemporary Surrealists:

• Alejandro Jodorowsky.
• David Lynch
• Jan Svankmajer

What Led to the Development of Surrealism?

Surrealism officially began with Dadaist writer André Breton’s 1924 Surrealist manifesto.

• Influences included:

The strength of Communism/Marxism as a political force. The Russian Revolution had occurred in the previous decade. Sigmund Freud’s ideas about the subconscious, including dream analysis, were also recent and fashionable. Also, the seemingly meaningless slaughter of the First World War which made may artists question what the point of art was in world where such acts were possible. All these factors were an influence on the growth of surrealism.

Freuds Key Ideas: The Three Levels of Consciousness:

1. the conscious deals with awareness of present perceptions, feelings, thoughts, memories, fantasies at any moment.
2. the pre-conscious is related to data that can readily be brought to consciousness.
3. the unconscious refers to data retained but not easily available to the individual’s conscious awareness or scrutiny.

The Unconscious:

1. a repository for traumatic repressed memories.
2. the source of anxiety-provoking drives, which are socially or ethically unacceptable to the individual.

Unconscious motivations are available to consciousness in a disguised form. Dreams and slips of the tongue, for instance, are concealed examples of unconscious content not confronted directly.

Key Characteristics:

• The belief that reality is not orderly and logical but is, in fact, a collection of coincidences and chance occurrences.  
• The only way to properly express this true reality is by allowing the unconscious mind free expression, rather than being stifled by the rational conscious mind.
• Surrealist art must not be planned but must grow and develop unconsciously.
• The first surrealists used automatic writing to access the unconscious part of the brain.
• The aim was to allow the pen to wander freely, outside of conscious control.
• This is clearly not possible with film which requires a high level of planning and organization
• Surrealist films dispense with linear narratives and plots.
• Traditional cause and effect is rejected, events can seem random and meaningless.
• This is intended to mimic the random structure of dreams and help the audience access their subconsious.
• Lack of explanation for the actions of characters draws on Freudian ideas that we are driven by our subconscious and not rationality.
• Disruption of expectations regarding time. It’s often unclear how much time has passed in surrealist films.
• Experiments with film language, such as continuity editing. A deliberate breaking of the convention that shots should follow each other in logical sequence. 
• An attempt to use editing to mimic the random nature of dreams.
• Mise en scene is used to combine objects in uncanny ways.
• Surrealist films often use shocking imagery that jolts the viewer.
• Explicit engagement with taboo subjects such as sexual desire.
• An attempt to access subconscious desires and force the audience to acknowledge and confront them.
• Surrealist films often assault traditional institutions in society, such as religion, family, or marriage.
• Ridiculing of the institutions that constitute the ideological state apparatus.
• The films are critical of the lifestyles of the Bourgeoisie.
• Surrealists aimed to make film, a traditional mode of mass entertainment, into one full of revolutionary potential at the social and political level.

The Contradictions in the Surrealists Approach:

• Surrealists wanted to rediscover a childlike and uninhibited approach to the world but they were also attracted by Freud’s scientific, rationalist research into the unconscious. He felt unconscious thought – often revealed in dreams – dreams could explain human behavior.
• Surrealists wanted to liberate the creative unconscious but also to develop a plan of political action to overthrow what they saw as the corrupt authority of the church and state. In the 1920s, the surrealists collaborated with the Communist party but also had an affinity with anarchists.
• The high level of planning required to make a film works against the use of free association, it cannot be “automatic.”