In this blog post, we will examine how surrealist cinema reveals the unconscious and desire through the irony of everyday life rather than fantasy, and explore the significance of this expressive strategy.
The Revolution of the Unconscious: Surrealism
To briefly describe the Surrealist mode of expression, it can be defined as a style aiming to express the super-real—a world transcending reality. It has its roots in Dadaism and formally began in 1924 when artists who had diverged from Dadaism within the avant-garde movement centered in early 20th-century France published André Breton’s “Surrealist Manifesto.” Theoretically grounded in Freud’s psychoanalysis, it is an expressive form that explores the world of fantasy and dreams beyond reason. Representative artists include Salvador Dalí and René Magritte.
Surrealism originated from an attitude seeking to transcend existing realistic, conceptual, and conventional forms of expression. Consequently, it is often understood as contrasting with realist or abstract expressive forms. Paradoxically, however, it also possesses an aspect that draws closer to realism through hyper-realistic, meticulous depiction, a characteristic particularly evident in the works of Salvador Dalí. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that Surrealism, in a broad sense, encompasses even Realism and Abstract Art within its category, rather than being confined to a specific form in a narrow sense.
Just as Surrealism originated in painting, its foundations are deeply rooted in painterly tradition and sculptural consciousness. While Cubism perceived the canvas as a single plane and focused on conceptualization, Surrealism created an entirely new spatial and compositional concept from a different direction. It was a method of granting greater autonomy to flat painting through the unconscious, the unreal, and the space of imagination. Due to these characteristics, Surrealism focused more on the invisible world than on visible, tangible reality. A prime example is the visual representation of the unconscious and the world of dreams, as presented in Freud’s psychoanalysis.
This signifies a decisive shift, moving away from the religious worldview that had long dominated painterly ideas and placing the human inner self and ego at the center of expression. The realm of expression expanded from religious and mythological subjects to the inner myths of the individual and humanity. Gradually, as the intangible became subjects of expression, non-figurative works also emerged.
This surrealist mode of expression carried the significance of a declaration of independence from the long tradition of Western art, which had circulated within the vast confines of religion. Consequently, painting broke free from the religious, Apollonian, and classical formula of the idealized eight-head proportion, moving toward freely capturing the inner imagination and fantasies of humanity. This was a crucial turning point that laid the foundation for the entire realm of 20th-century fantasy art.
Moreover, Surrealism transcended painting and literature, taking on an ideological and movement-like character. Its radical stance, aimed at overturning existing conceptual systems like politics, ethics, and religion, influenced contemporary society as a whole. While some Surrealists attempted to align with Communism, ideological differences and internal conflicts led to the movement’s fragmentation. Subsequently, until the period of World War II, Surrealism sought new directions by integrating with Freud’s psychoanalysis. Its influence spread globally as artists, including Dalí, ventured into the United States.
Expressive Characteristics of Surrealist Cinema
The work often cited as the first surrealist film is the 1929 production “Un Chien Andalou,” co-created by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. This film originated when Buñuel recounted a shocking dream he had to his fellow Spaniard Salvador Dalí. As they discussed the intense images each possessed, they decided to translate them into film.
Rather than following a traditional narrative structure, the film resembles a sequence of scenes that translate surrealist paintings into moving images. Shocking visual fragments are presented: a woman’s eye being sliced open with a razor blade, a swarm of ants crawling out of a palm, and the image of a figure dragging a piano containing a donkey carcass with a rope. At the time of its release, many critics attempted to interpret it through Marxist ideology or Freudian psychology. However, Buñuel clarified that he had merely visualized and juxtaposed superego images that might unconsciously surface in dreams, seemingly mocking such interpretive habits. He adopted an attitude that scoffed at the very attempt to analyze the scenes conceptually. This work was the first signal flare of a surrealist expressive style, breaking free from conventional, formalistic artistic trends and merging with the language of film.
Subsequently, Buñuel gradually expanded his surrealist visual language through various experiments. While starting from the non-narrative structure of Un Chien Andalou, he progressively absorbed narrative elements, ultimately achieving a mastery of both storytelling and visual language in his later works. His signature approach was to reveal humanity’s instinctual and unconscious desires through conscious, conceptual forms.
A prime example is his 1977 film “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.” In this work, the character Conchita was portrayed by two alternating actors, allowing the contrasting images of a saintly woman and a femme fatale to coexist within a single figure. This was a groundbreaking attempt that perfectly resonated with the title, serving as a device that amplified both the pleasure and tension of cinematic expression. Furthermore, Buñuel’s unique worldview constantly poses questions to the audience through sudden scenes of anti-government terrorism scattered throughout the film and through objects like a huge bundle whose purpose and origin are unknown.
In his 1972 film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, he satirizes social hypocrisy through the repeated failures of bourgeois characters attempting to have dinner without a fixed destination. Scenes where characters preparing meals in the dining room end up eating in the bathroom, or sitting on flush toilets instead of chairs, create intense visual irony. These moments draw the audience deeper into the narrative flow amidst strange and bizarre situations.
While pictorial surrealism broke free from religious and ideological concepts to focus on expressing superego and unconscious imagery, surrealist cinema took a step further, evolving into a form that reveals the unconscious and inner desires within realistic yet ironic situations. It does not merely present fantastical images; it prompts the audience to reflect by creating fissures within the structure of everyday life.
Even without melting clocks like Salvador Dalí’s paintings or giant floating rocks like René Magritte’s, cinematic surrealism constructs its own unique form through the irony of everyday life, the explicit and realistic inner self, and the expression of the unconscious. In this sense, pictorial surrealism and cinematic surrealism explored the world of the unconscious in distinct ways within their respective mediums, and this current continues into contemporary cinema and visual art today. This ultimately reaffirms that surrealism was not merely a single artistic movement, but a fundamental shift in the way art thought about itself throughout the 20th century and beyond.
