Dali & Film

by Ades Dawn

Salvador Dali was one of the most famous and also one of the most notorious artists of the twentieth century, his flamboyant personal style establishing him as a showman in the popular imagination. While the centenary of Dali's birth in 2004 was marked by a worldwide series of exhibitions, events and publications, no thorough investigation has taken place of the part played by film as a key influence on Dali's art, nor of his extensive involvement in film-based projects. "Dali and Film" redresses this omission, presenting both the major works that reflect Dali's preoccupation with film and material related to the key film projects on which he worked. Cinema contributed to Dali's understanding of both the power and the uses of illusion. In 1929 and 1930 he collaborated with Luis Bunuel on the startling and highly controversial films, Un Chien Andalou and L'Age d'Or. Many years later, Dali worked with the Disney studios in Hollywood and with Alfred Hitchcock, devising a dream sequence for the psychological thriller Spellbound that remains one of the most innovative in cinema. Over the intervening years, Dali had come to reject the implicit elitism of modernist film and embrace instead the popularity of mainstream cinema, recognising its potential to bring his work to a vast audience. "Dali and Film" reveals the depth and persistence of Dali's fascination with the medium, bringing a new dimension to our understanding of one of the great masters of twentieth-century art.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published July 1, 2007

Reviews

[E. G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foreword by the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí
Foreword
Acknowledgements

--Why Film?, Dawn Ades
--Film as Metaphor, Fèlix Fanés
--In Darkened Rooms, Matthew Gale

--Art Film, Antiartistic Film, 1927, Salvador Dalí
--Short Critical History of Cinema, 1932, Salvador Dalí

--A Cinematic Chronology of Dalí: 1904--1940

--Un Chien andalou, Matthew Gale
--L'Age d'or, Matthew Gale
--La Chèvre sanitaire, Agustín Sánchez Vidal
--Cinq Minutes à propos du surréalisme, Dawn Ades
--Contre la famille, Dawn Ades
--Babaouo, William Jeffett
--Les Mystères surréalistes de New York, Matthew Gale
--Giraffes on Horseback Salad, Michael R. Taylor

--Surrealism and Hollywood, 1937, Salvador Dalí
--My Cinematographic Secrets, 1954, Salvador Dalí

--A Cinematic Chronology of Dalí: 1941--89

--Moontide, Ilene Susan Fort
--Spellbound, Sara Cochran
--Destino, Fèlix Fanés
--La Carretilla de carne, Agustín Sánchez Vidal
--Le Sang catalan, Montse Aguer and Matthew Gale
--Chaos and Creation, Helen Sainsbury
--Crazy Movies that Disappear, Elliot H. King

Filmography and Further Reading
List of Exhibited Works
Lenders and Copyright credits
Index

[Jack Herbert Christal Gattanella · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/2 out of 5

If you're ever looking for THE chronicle of what Salvador Dali did (and didn't) do in the medium of cinema, this is the text. Is it a truly great book? Maybe not. Some of the chapters are just so academic and, on a subjective level, some of it just goes over my head; one needs, I think, to be a full-blown art historian to get many of the references to other artists and art (and it's not that I don't know some of them - of course people like Picasso and Mondrian and Rosseau and others are name-dropped).

The book has some very essential chapters on the projects that Dali is most known for in the cinematic landscape, Un chien Andalou, which he co-wrote, and L'Age D'Or, which he also (sorta, maybe, not entirely as it turns out) co-wrote again with Luis Bunuel, making the sort of textbook definitions of what can be done with surrealism in film. The other chapters after this are about how this man - who, make no mistake, worked most prolifically in paintings and drawings, not as a filmmaker in the traditional sense - operated in and out of the film world.

Of course it's very informative and fun, and reading about the "What-Could've-Been" tale of how he got ever so close to making a Marx brothers movie (he and Harpo, as it turns out, were kind of like kindred spirits) called "Giraffes on Horseback Salad." You'll also get more in-depth words about the several scripts he tried to write and get done, some seemingly more substantial (or interesting) than others, and those collaborations that either got tarnished by Hollywood (thanks Selznick) or took until after his death to become realized (thanks Disney!) It's also nice how it ends on the note that, into his 80's, Dali wanted to do one last trip into surrealism with Bunuel, a project called "The Little Demon." He was already pretty much deaf by that time, so Bunuel had to decline.

In other words, Dali & Film is loaded with much of the fantastical, awe-inspiringly bizarre pieces that made Dali pretty much a house-hold name, but also some of the lesser-seen (maybe never-seen) drawings and other works that made up his oeuvre. It is largely academic at times (loaded, as you can imagine, with footnotes), but this isn't to decry the book that much. If it's dry in some parts, it's outweighed by and large by the immense plethora of research that this author, and other collaborating writers, did to make THE definitive text for those interested.

[Teri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent overview of Dali and cinema, and good companion to exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art.