Anthology of Surreal Cinema, Vol. 1

If the mention of Marcel Duchamp's name makes you perk up a little, then this is the DVD for you. If you hear the name and ask "Who's he?," I suggest you might want to either skip this program altogether or fasten yourself in for a bumpy ride because this is surrealism for hardcore surrealists. If David Lynch is too weird for you, then the four perplexing short films collected on this DVD are really going to make you insane. If, however, you pick this disc up because it contains the only surviving film written by the crazed poet and theatrical genius Antonin Artaud, then you're going to be in hog heaven.

That is, if you can also look past the terrible condition these films are in. When I reviewed another seminal work of avant-garde filmmaking in this column (Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou), I pointed out that the transfer of the film was less than revelatory. Well, compared to the transfers of the films in this set, that disc could have been a Criterion title. And, like the earlier Bunuel film, I'm not entirely sure that these aren't the best transfers they can get for these titles, since it's a safe bet that their negatives weren't stored lovingly away through the ages.

The best known of the films in the collection, Rene Clair's Entr'Acte, is in the worst shape. Wash-outs, scratches, and breaks abound in the image of this film, but it is a testament to the film's power that even with these defects, the film remains an amazing piece of work. It's also worth noting that Rene Clair is the only director on this disc who went on to have a career in the mainstream cinemas of both Europe and Hollywood. Envisioned as an "Intermission film" to be shown between acts of one of Erik Satie's ballets, Entr'Acte begins with a bang (a cannon is fired) and ends with a resurrection and a touch of light-hearted magic. Fans of Beck may be interested in this film, as it is the basis for the "Loser" video.

The next film in the collection is also the longest (28 minutes). Germain Dulac's The Seashell and the Clergyman is the film mentioned above as being written by Antonin Artaud and one can see some traits of his "theatre of cruelty" in the gesture-heavy, non-verbal acting style (though, since it's a silent film, none of his interesting theories and experiments on sound in performance were covered). Essentially the tale of a man reacting (in horror) to his own sexuality, the film is full of wild imagery, and its heavy use of dissolves, superimpositions and other optical tricks might make it the standout film on the disc.

Marcel Duchamp's Anemic Cinema is six minutes of dadaism rolled up into a series of spiral shapes and slogans in French. These are not subtitled, which might be a weakness of the DVD, but knowing Duchamp's reputation, the phrases probably don't make sense in French and might have been impossible to translate into English. If you only see one swirling shape avant-garde film this year, make it this one.

Cubist painter Fernand Leger's short film Ballet Mechanique rounds out the disc, and its use of sound makes it a particularly memorable experience (this is the only film with an original soundtrack in the collection), although its montage of hats, smiling women, and shifting gears and pistons continues to baffle me the same way it did when I first saw the film, back when I was a college student.

My major qualm with the disc is its lack of extras. This is a group of films that cries out for some kind of commentary track and there is none. No interviews with surrealism experts, no filmographies or biographies of the artists, any of which might have helped make the disc more accessible to people who aren't hardcore surrealists.

But while I don't recommend this to folks who don't know Man Ray from Nick Ray, it is definitely worth the twenty bucks if your favorite painter is Salvador Dali or Rene Magritte, or if you've read any of Andre Breton's work and thought you understood it. -- Christopher Hyatt