Categorisation:
A masterpiece of the surrealist cinema that emerged from the French avant-garde movement. The story told in the film is a love story of a break-up caused by a lack of synchronization between the awakening of male and female sexuality. From a civilised point of view, it is a development of social attitudes towards sexuality, moving from sexual repression to a confrontation with sexuality. The tone of the whole film is rather depressing and dull.
Form and Function：
There is no specific plot, only a set of illogical shots and a dissonant joining of strange and grotesque images: a man trying to embrace the woman he desires, but tripping over a long rope tied to a pumpkin; a dead donkey piled bloody on a piano; the director’s use of the cinematic form for unexplained absurdity and his fascination with poetic new metaphorical techniques. Brutal imagery and shocking visual effects, such as a sharp razor cutting open a human eye, a human head hanging under a giant clock, etc., are used to convey the painful emotions of despair and anarchic rebellion.
Process:
In the film’s narrative approach throughout, the director breaks away from the traditional linear classical narrative telling and adopts a hybrid, fractured narrative style, conveying an absurd and bizarre ideological character for the audience through a dreamy, fragmented and unique cinematic narrative vision.
Formal Elements;
The depth of the space and the cross-cutting between the outdoor and indoor areas allow the viewer to follow an underlying axis of consciousness from the seemingly illogical leaps into the surreal. The “light” has already been mentioned, and the dreamlike quality of the film can be seen in the contrast between the style of lighting in the opening credits and later sections. The lighting of the film is fantastic, as the bright style seems to emphasise the realistic nature of the film’s plot – the dream world is often done with high contrast, high shadows and darker images, false focus, etc. The overall brighter style of photography allows the film to provide the viewer with a richer perceptual message