The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928)
(La coquille et le clergyman)
Country: FR
Technical: bw 40m
Director: Germaine Dulac
Cast: Alex Allin, Lucien Bataille, Genica Athanasiou
Synopsis:
A priest who pours liquid from a large seashell into laboratory flasks is called upon by a general to marry him, and is overcome by erotically inspired fantasies. Eventually he drinks the liquid.
Review:
This simple parable of the combat between the earthly and spiritual is a magnificently filmed 'dark night of the soul'. One of the first films to be called 'surrealist', it foreshadows Un chien andalou and Eraserhead, and looks back to Caligari. The double exposure work is astonishingly good, as are the disembodied tracks through darkly lit corridors and half-open doors, and surrealist motifs include hands, eyes, mouths, and stalactitic forms, while some images are split or stretched like glass. The BBFC famously opined: 'This film is so obscure as to have no apparent meaning. If there is a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable.'
(La coquille et le clergyman)
Country: FR
Technical: bw 40m
Director: Germaine Dulac
Cast: Alex Allin, Lucien Bataille, Genica Athanasiou
Synopsis:
A priest who pours liquid from a large seashell into laboratory flasks is called upon by a general to marry him, and is overcome by erotically inspired fantasies. Eventually he drinks the liquid.
Review:
This simple parable of the combat between the earthly and spiritual is a magnificently filmed 'dark night of the soul'. One of the first films to be called 'surrealist', it foreshadows Un chien andalou and Eraserhead, and looks back to Caligari. The double exposure work is astonishingly good, as are the disembodied tracks through darkly lit corridors and half-open doors, and surrealist motifs include hands, eyes, mouths, and stalactitic forms, while some images are split or stretched like glass. The BBFC famously opined: 'This film is so obscure as to have no apparent meaning. If there is a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable.'
(La coquille et le clergyman)
Country: FR
Technical: bw 40m
Director: Germaine Dulac
Cast: Alex Allin, Lucien Bataille, Genica Athanasiou
Synopsis:
A priest who pours liquid from a large seashell into laboratory flasks is called upon by a general to marry him, and is overcome by erotically inspired fantasies. Eventually he drinks the liquid.
Review:
This simple parable of the combat between the earthly and spiritual is a magnificently filmed 'dark night of the soul'. One of the first films to be called 'surrealist', it foreshadows Un chien andalou and Eraserhead, and looks back to Caligari. The double exposure work is astonishingly good, as are the disembodied tracks through darkly lit corridors and half-open doors, and surrealist motifs include hands, eyes, mouths, and stalactitic forms, while some images are split or stretched like glass. The BBFC famously opined: 'This film is so obscure as to have no apparent meaning. If there is a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable.'