Surrealism is an artistic, intellectual, and literary movement that sought to liberate the unrestrained imagination of the unconscious mind. One form of accomplishing this is by means of unnatural or irrational juxtapositions and combinations of images. As demonstrated by the two films Un Chien Andalou and Ballet Mécanique, surrealism’s most lasting impact would be on photography, cinema, painting, and advertising.

Un Chien Andalou is a surrealist film by director Luis Buñuel. It portrayed sexuality, desire, and violence as well as human emotion. Because the film has no plot and the chronology of the film is muddled, I made sense of it by linking it to Sigmund Freud (dreams) and children, based on André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism. Dreams are deemed as a resource rich in visual and intellectual stimulation, whereas, children have not yet learned to suppress their imaginations. Resultantly, both dreams and children support liberation from the traditional education, work, and dullness useful only in modern bourgeois culture. In The Painter of Modern Life, Charles Baudelaire states that a child “sees everything in a state of newness.” This is exemplified in Un Chien Andalou, as the young man and the young woman stared at his hand where ants emerged from a hole in the palm, their faces encompassing uncertainty and interest. Ants, uncertainty, and interest draw attention to children. Further into the film, there is a woman whom I initially wrongly identified as a young man poking at a severed human hand. She was surrounded by a large crowd and a policeman making an effort at managing the crowd. Poking also draws attention to children and newness, as an initial reaction to exploring and perceiving the unknown is to poke (moving slowly all the while enabling distance). Because the policeman was making an effort at managing the crowd, I comprehended it as the policeman was making an effort at managing the “child” inside the adults, repressing it once more into the unconscious. Later in the film, the young man is roused from his dream of relations with the young woman by another young man in professional attire. His response to being awoken solidified the notion that perhaps, it is reality that interferes with dreams and not dreams with reality. Lastly, in the final minutes of the film, the young woman sticks out her tongue (childish) and then proceeds to a coastal beach where she meets another man with whom she gives the impression of being romantically involved with (conduct associated with adults). It comes across as though the woman is attempting to reconcile both facets within herself, attempting to attain surreality.

Ballet Mécanique is a Dadaist film by artist Fernand Léger. Like Un Chien Andalou, no plot exists and the chronology is muddled. Nothing in Ballet Mécanique is fixed/stagnate, as everything is in motion, whether it is a human being or a mechanism. The film even commences with a woman swinging and concludes with legs (mobility). Throughout Ballet Mécanique, there is an emphasis on repetition, generating a hypnotic effect that is fortified with the audio and rapid/spontaneous images, challenging the logic of anything that is planned, especially in regard to the future.

Un Chien Andalou and Ballet Mécanique unquestionably achieved success in thrusting me out of my comforting assumptions and my perceived norms. Additionally, I’m not aware of the stigma associated with women’s body hair in 1929, but the young woman in Un Chien Andalou had underarm hair. Underarm hair is not currently a “norm” for women in 2016, but as with all “norms,” this one is being called into question and slowly dispersing among few select individuals.