But for a few bits and pieces, this odd undertaking resembles an interminable commercial for the unconscious, toward which it adopts a fairly gaga attitude. It may be one of the few authentically Surrealist movies ever made in America, as well as a kind of proto‐Pop icon.Īn example of inauthentic Surrealism in film is Hans Richter's “Dreams That Money Can Buy,” an ammitious color movie made in Hollywood in 1947 with the collaboration of Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Alexander Calder and other luminaries. One is a real find: “Rose Hobart” (1939) by Joseph Cornell, a small, hauntingly erotic film composed largely of rearranged clips from on earlier Hollywood opus, “The Green Goddess,” in which a British girl is held captive by an African potentate. All feat are included in the Guggenheim Museum's current mini‐festival of Dada and Surrealist cinema along with five lesserknown or simply lesser items.
These and two other films-the Bunuel‐Salvador Dali “tin Chien andalou” (1929) and “Blood of a Poet” (1930) by Jean Cocteau-surely deserve to be called touchstones of the canon. But a definite tradition has been established around a handful of movies, ranging from Bend Clair's riotous little “Entr'acte” (1924) to Luis Bunuel's searing classic, “L'Age d'or” (1930) There's no telling how many films were made in the heyday of this spirit, before diluted Surrealism became, in the late 1940's, a staple form of Hollywood kitsch.
As such, they were a medium made to order for the early proponents of Dada and Surrealism, with their programs of dream or dream‐like imagery, esthetic dissociation and calculaed shock.
EVER since 1902, when the pioneer French filmmaker Georges Méliès shot a spacecraft into the eye of the Man in the Moon, the movies have had a prediliction for the fantastic.
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