The Other Salvador Dalí: How the King of Surrealism Made his Mark on Cinema

In this article series, we explore the lesser-known artistic output of artists who became known for another medium or genre of art. Often, great artists wear many different hats, but break through and achieve acclaim because of their work in one specific medium. We aim to highlight the multifaceted nature of their talent by shining a light not on what they are best known for, but on the lesser-known side of their artistic production. This week, we explore the various cinema projects of the great Surrealist master Salvador Dalí who, despite being famous for his painting, also made his indelible mark on cinema.

Un Chien Andalou (1929)

In 1929 in Paris, Luis Buñuel told Salvador Dalí about a dream he had had, in which a razor blade sliced open an eyeball. Dalí then shared his dream with Buñuel, about a hand crawling with ants. Inspired by these powerful images, Dalí convinced Buñuel to make a film together: the movie would be based solely on their dreams and focused on the emotions they felt, abandoning the traditional notion of a linear plot, and logic. At the time, Buñuel was already working as an assistant director in the French film industry, but this movie would be the beginning of something completely new for him.
Buñuel and Dalí agreed that the movie should be filled with irrationality and images without explanation. The script was completed in 6 days.

Un Chien Andalou begins with that very image from Buñuel’s dream: a man slicing open a woman’s eyeball with a razor blade, immediately followed by a cloud passing over the moon, as though it is slicing it open. Other surreal scenes include the hand crawling with ants, a man dragging two pianos containing the corpses of two donkeys across a room, and a man’s mouth disappearing suddenly from his face. Buñuel and Dalí had expected a riot to break out, but the film was met with a positive reception and many famous Parisian artists like Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and André Breton, attended the movie’s premiere. While Buñuel was relieved, the flamboyant Dalí, who loved a bit of drama, was quite disappointed. Un Chien Andalou led to an invitation to both Dalí and Buñuel to join the Surrealist movement. Instead of the hoped-for turmoil, the artists ironically received 1 million Francs from wealthy French patrons to make a sequel to Un Chien Andalou. However, they could not seem to come to an agreement on how to approach the film, and their relationship eventually came to an end. Dalí left the project, and Buñuel continued on his own and turned the project into his hour-long movie L’Âge d’Or (1930). Dalí criticised the film as he claimed it was an aggression against Catholicism, and the film was in fact banned at the time due to its blasphemous nature.

Spellbound (1945)

During World War II, Dalí and his wife Gala fled to the United States. Americans loved Dalí and his art, and he loved them and their large amounts of money, right back. In 1945, Dalí was approached by Alfred Hitchcock to design the dream sequence for his new movie Spellbound, starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck. In an interview, Hitchcock elaborates on his choice of Dalí for this scene:

“I requested Dalí. Selznick, the producer, had the impression that I wanted Dalí for the publicity value. That wasn’t it at all. What I was after was again the thing we talked about earlier. The vividness of dreams. As you know, all Dalí’s work is very solid and very sharp, with very long perspectives and black shadows. Actually I wanted the dream sequences to be shot on the back lot, not in the studio at all. I wanted them to be shot in the bright sunshine so the camera man would be forced to, what we call, stop down, and get a very hard image. This was, again, the avoidance of the cliché. All dreams in movies are blurred. It isn’t true. Dalí was the best man for me to do the dreams because that’s what dreams should be.”

Dalí envisioned the dream sequence to last 20 minutes, but in the end, it was cut short to roughly three minutes. Some ideas were also discarded from the start, as they would be too complicated to film, such as a ballroom scene with 15 grand pianos suspended from the ceiling. Other scenes were cut after Dalí and Hitchcock had left the set. These decisions mostly came from the film’s producer, David O. Selznick, who became increasingly concerned about the scene, and wrote: “The more I look at the dream sequence for Spellbound, the worse I feel it to be… It’s not Dalí’s fault, for his work is much finer and much better for the purpose than I ever thought it would be. It is the photography, set-ups, lighting, et cetera.”
Spellbound went on to receive rave reviews and was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning the Best Original Score for its soundtrack. However, Dalí believed the best parts of the film had been cut and did not ever speak much about his involvement in the movie afterwards, likely being disappointed by how many of his ideas were cut. Still, Dalí’s dream sequence remains a beautiful example of how his vision translated from visual art to cinema.