Surrealism was officially born in 1924, with the publishing of André Breton's Surrealist Manifesto. So it's quite possibly that René Clair's short movie of the same year may be the first cinematic expression of surrealism, preceding Luis Buñuel's An Andaluzian Dog by a few years.
Working with a screenplay by Francis Picabia, a Dada/surrealist artist, Clair's movie is much in line with Buñuel's future movie. At times it's a collage and juxtaposition of disconnected images; but it has a story in it, about a coffin that runs away from a procession, forcing a mob to chase it.
It's an entertainment, but for me it's not a great work of cinema. It's not as good as Clair's next movie, The Imaginary Voyage, for instance. Perhaps it has value for scholars of film history, but I don't see it as a movie that has stood the test of time, like Fritz Lang's 1921 movie, Destiny, which seems fresh and engaging still.
Working with a screenplay by Francis Picabia, a Dada/surrealist artist, Clair's movie is much in line with Buñuel's future movie. At times it's a collage and juxtaposition of disconnected images; but it has a story in it, about a coffin that runs away from a procession, forcing a mob to chase it.
It's an entertainment, but for me it's not a great work of cinema. It's not as good as Clair's next movie, The Imaginary Voyage, for instance. Perhaps it has value for scholars of film history, but I don't see it as a movie that has stood the test of time, like Fritz Lang's 1921 movie, Destiny, which seems fresh and engaging still.