French Impressionism and Surrealism

French filmmakers turned the camera into a mind, using superimposition, dreams and shocking images to show what lies beneath ordinary life.

When: 1918–1930
Where: France
Films: 5 · 2 guided
Named by: 7 guides

Where it sits

The first filmsFrench Impressionism and SurrealismPoetic Realism · French New Wave

Context

What was happening

France after the First World War: the country is exhausted, and Hollywood fills its screens. Film is still young, and its defenders are trying to show that it is an art in its own right. In Paris, small cinemas and film societies give serious viewers a place to meet, and a few directors begin to think of cinema as closer to music or poetry than to theatre.

In the same years, the poets and painters of Paris are turning to the irrational. André Breton publishes the first surrealist manifesto in 1924, and dreams, chance and desire become serious material for art. Cinema, which can lay one image over another and cut anything against anything, offers both circles a tool no other art has.

The signature

What you see on screen

1SuperimpositionOne image laid over another, so a face can hold a memory.
2Speed and slownessSlow motion and rapid cutting; in Napoléon, three screens at once.
3Dream logicScenes follow the rules of a dream, and nobody explains them.
4The shock imageA sudden, disturbing cut, shown without explanation or apology.

The people

Who made it

AGAbel GanceEpic ambition and restless cameras. Napoléon, J'accuse.
JEJean EpsteinFilmmaker and thinker of the impressionist camera. Coeur fidèle, The Fall of the House of Usher.
GDGermaine DulacMoved from impressionist drama to dream experiment. The Smiling Madame Beudet, The Seashell and the Clergyman.
LBLuis BuñuelThe surrealist's sharpest eye. Un Chien Andalou, L'Âge d'or, Viridiana.
JCJean CocteauA poet who came to film from outside the surrealist group. The Blood of a Poet.

The films

Defining films, in order

Napoléon
1STARTNapoléon1927 · not on Cinespective yet
The Fall of the House of Usher
2STARTThe Fall of the House of Usher1928 · not on Cinespective yet
3STARTUn Chien Andalou1929
4L'Âge d'or1930
5Land Without Bread1933

Its constellation

Where it came from, what it led to

Led to

Poetic Realism French New WaveNew French Extremity

Open the galaxy of movements

Legacy

Where you still see it

Buñuel's late satires, Viridiana and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, kept the method alive. Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon and David Lynch's Blue Velvet drew on dream logic and the uncanny everyday. Jean Vigo and Jean Renoir turned the lyrical camera to ordinary lives; Resnais, Marker and Varda revived its play with memory; Noé, Denis and Breillat inherited the shock image.

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