French Impressionism and Surrealism (1918-1930)

Through out the silent era, a number of film movements in France posed major alternatives to Classical Hollywood form.  Impressionism was a French Avant-Garde Film movement that was made by the French Film industry and was profitable. Surrealism was made independently of the French System and did not prove financially successful.

Impressionism

In 1915 American Films flooded in to the French Market. By the end of World War I the French Film industry never fully recovered.  The Impressionists focused purely on emotion and subjectivity, but their aesthetic did not take off as an international success

Surrealist

·      *    The Surrealist filmmakers relied on private patronage and screened their works to small artist gatherings.

·       *   Films perplexed and shocked audiences

·       *   Linked to Surrealist painting and literature

Surrealism

Surrealist cinema was directly linked to Surrealism in literature and painting. Automatic writing and painting, the search for bizarre or evocative imagery, the deliberate avoidance of rationally explicable form or style-these became features of Surrealism as it developed in the period 1924-1929. From the start, the Surrealists were attracted to the cinema, especially admiring films that presented untamed desire or the fantastic and marvelous. Surrealist cinema is overtly anti-narrative, attacking causality itself.  The films tease the audience into finding absent narrative logic and events are juxtaposed for their disturbing effect

The End of the French Surrealist Movement

In the 1930’s the movement led by Andre Breton had disbanded. Individual Surrealist Artists like Luis Bunuel, Max Ernst and Salvador Dali continued to paint and make films. Bunuel created films until the 60’s including The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and Belle Du Jour.

Un Chien Andalou

Released in 1929 to a limited showing in Paris and ran for 8 months following the premiere. The only rule for the writing of the script was that "no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted. Moreover, he stated that, "Nothing, in the film, symbolizes anything. The only method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis.