Surrealism- a 20th century avant-garde movement in art and literature that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind. Both films in the discussion exemplifies this by creating powerful meaning to each random scenes of art.

Le sang d'un poète by Jean Cocteau

One might say this film was a waste of 47 minutes that won’t be given back, but the actuality is most poets write in hopes that the individual will interpret their own meaning using their imagination. That’s what makes poetry so fun! Jean Cocteau made it clear, at the beginning of the film, his display of the filming equipment in the background is a clear indication that he was attempting to express himself on screen. Jean was the first poet to do this. One scene that stood out was the young boy at the end lying down in blood, yet was completely ignored. As in all of his scenes it showed the despair and depression throughout the movie. I can only imagine this was a time the French were also experiencing those same emotions with their country.

Der Andalusische Hund by Luis Bunuel

This movie took a lot of research to understand what some of the scenes meant. Research on it was quite hard because majority of it was not in English. Here’s what I did find though. The two scenes with the ants in the palms, meant he was “itching to kill” the woman. Where I am lost is what does the scene mean when he has her cornered, yet he turns away to pull the piano, dead donkey and ten commandments towards her? I can only guess that the ten commandments was in reference to “thy shall not kill?” In any case this movie was very disturbing. From the eye being split by a razor in the beginning to the man almost looking like zombie while he is groping her. This short film was more suspenseful and left a lot of unexplained questions. Either way it was different and like the others showed me how French