French Surrealist Cinema and Mulholland Drive

After watching a few french surrealists films that were screened last tuesday, I noticed some interesting similarities between those films and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. The main plot of L'Age D'Or simply tells the story of two lovers trying to consumate their passion but constantly find themselves interrupted by several situations. The film itself is as surreal as they come, and through this I began to notice a correlation between it and Mulholland Drive. For one, the people in both films seem very disconnected from reality, which makes each film seem as if it is in fact part of a dream. For instance, in L'Age D'Or, outside the party a man kills a young boy for what seems like no reason. The party goers come out briefly to look at the scene, then reside to go back to the party and act as if a gruesome murder did not just take place. Yet later on, the main character slaps a female at the party, and the guests quickly jump to her aid and are furious with the man. This sense of a warped reality is present in Mulholland Drive and most of David Lynch's other works as well.

Ménilmontant

The film I most enjoyed from class last tuesday was Ménilmontant by far. This french impressionist film by director Dimitri Kirsanoff tells the story of two sisters who, after the murder of their parents when they were children, find themselves in Paris as young adults. As time pass, they both fall in love with the same thuggish man. One becomes pregnant by this man, while the other becomes a prostitute. Throughout the film, the jealousy evident between both sisters and their psychologoy is displayed by Kirsanoff in several ways.

Quite interesting to the audience is the first sexual encounter with the soon-to-be-pregnant sister and the thug. A moving camera sequence is superimposed over the scene, which depicts the other sister in her full jealous rage. The same sort of jealousy is felt through the first sister, when some time later the thug seduces the second. Instead of superimposing the two scenes, the director makes use of lightning-fast cuts back and forth to the second sister's shocked face, emphasizing this with every shot that gets closer and closer to her expression. These two different examples show how Kirsanoff was able to portray both sisters' emotions throughout the short film, which almost brings about the suicide of one. Even more astounding is the fact that this is one of the very few silent films that was able to tell a story without the use of intertitles, or any sort of writings that narrate the story.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Last tuesday night was my first experience with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and I found it to be a very peculiar little film. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is considered one of the most influential German Expressionist films and one of the greatest horror movies of the silent film era. What I found most interesting about the film was the choice of set-pieces the director, Robert Wiene, employed to suggest an emotional state through each scene. The world of the characters, which is mostly told through the means of a flashback, is created with very stylized sets. The buildings and walkways are very jagged and angled, and the walls are never solid shades of gray, but rather are painted in brooding shapes and pigments. The hallway of the asylum is stands out to me as a great example. When you think of a real life asylum, you could probably imagine a very sterile environment, white walls, and a simple but organized design. In this film, however, the walls seem to be as insane and unstable as the patients they house. Intentional or not, Director Robert Wiene's set pieces create a very vivid idea of a dream (or nightmare) turned into reality for this film.

Un Chien Andalou

Un Chien Andalou is a short film created by spanish director Luis Buñuel with the collaboration of surrealist artist Salvador Dali. Running at the length of sixteen minutes, the film is composed of several scenes with no clear chronological order, and no real plot. Unlike classical narrative form, which usually identifies a problem and shows how characters work through them, the content of Un Chien Andalou is purposefully jumbled and devoid of meaning. Scenes are cut at odd times, or lead to new ones that have no connection to previous ones. This choice of filming pertains to the subject of dream logic. The idea of the film itself came from the shared fascination for what the human psyche could create that the two men both shared. Buñuel made it a point in his writings to express that when writing the script, between him and Dali, "no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted." The only means to interpret the film itself would have to come from psychoanalysis. The film was not meant to convey a story, but instead act as a conveyor of artistic ideas. The characters have no real place in the story, but instead act as nameless individuals one might expect to see in a dream setting.