Surrealist Film: Beginnings

A collection of four key films, moving from surrealist to Dadaist, moving from formal to content driven explorations of the unconscious, the dissonant.
Ballet Mecanique (France, 1924) is a formally daring piece where the montage becomes too fast for our eyes. The circles and triangle montage is so simple, it takes us to the edge of cinema and what we experience on a moving image. Incredibly powerful. The cogs and pendulums draw one in and draw one in. The repetition of the women mounting the stairs, again, asks us what we are seeing, where is the connection? Dwells too long occasionally, largely a wonderful and important piece of formalism.
Entr'acte (France, 1924) is mucking around with stop-motion and frame speed. It is excellent in certain sequences, the chase moving from interesting, to funny, to bizarelly sad. This film is surrealist in that it uses unexpected items out of context, it plays with them to disorientate. When we think we have solved the puzzle, it refuses to play the game. Dwells too long on some images, but interesting, if more of a game than anything else.
Ghosts Before Breakfast (Germany, 1928) is the Hans Richter piece we have seen before, and is again an interesting use of surrealist motif of the disocrdant object.
Un Chien Andalou (France & Spain, 1929) is the daddy of surrealist film, Bunuel and Dali. It is directed, as we saw with later Bunuel, in really a very conventional manner. The montage is the same, except for the jumps in time and space that do ask us questions about where we move from image to image. It is what is the content that makes this surrealist; surely there are myriad psychoanaltic reading to it, which we shall leave to elsewhere. The themes appear to be of horrors and of women. The eye slitting remains a great and revolting sight, genuinely powerful. Also of note is the music, Bunuel choosing such a peacful collection to undermine audience expectations.
These four film were fascinating, a great look and introduction to a huge and wide-ranging movement.