“Ballet Mecanique” and “Le Chien Andalou” (Xiong)

Dadaism and Surrealism are artistic and intellectual movements in the early 20th century. They both fundamental define and sharp Modernism with their direct reaction and illogical performances.

The 1924 year vision of “Ballet Mécanique is quite amazing me. I feel it more likes a phycology performance of art rather than just an artist piece of film. First, the file opens and ends with an animated feature which I assume it is artist Charlie Chaplin. With the machines and the industrial produce, it makes me concerned and feel anxious. Second, the cubist images stimulate my eyes and also reflect to my brain; makes me think about something which relates to my life and society. I even can’t express what my feeling is. Then the visual juxtaposition of features play a significant role. They simulate my visual sense then develop anther feeling into my mind. Overall, for me, the film embodies many values of the surrealist, which are irrational and ant- idealistic.

“Un Chien Andalou” is a short movie that really confuses me, perhaps it is a silence movie so that I cannot connect to all the scenes. There are many unreasonable transaction scenes that trouble me. In the opening of the file, the sense of a razor cuts an eye makes me scared. but it jumps quickly to a totally different scene that a man rides a bicycle in the street. The two transactions are irrational and confusing. Even on the other scenes, they all have an unrealistic connection. In other word, the film uses an illogical narration to describe the transactions and put them as a story. However, it makes the story unrecognized and chaotic, at least from my perspective they do. I believe the director deliberately narratives the story to the audiences and try to connect them with a comma sense.

Both files are perform an unreasonable, non-logical and unrealistic sense of feeling, meanwhile they also react with a physiological thinking for audiences.

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