Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

Dal &Film by Matthew Gale

Review by: Carmen Garca de la Rasilla
Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Vol. 13 (2009), pp. 208-210
Published by: Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies
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208 Arizona
Journal
of Hispanic
Cultural Studies
Dali & Film
The Museum of Modern
Art,
2008
Edited
by
Matthew Gale
Exhibits are
often
an
excellent means to
bring
together
the reflections and
perspectives
of lead
ing
scholars on a
specific topic.
This was
certainly
the case of the itinerant exhibit on Dali and
Film,
initially
showcased in London's T?te Modern
(June 1-September
9, 2007),
which
brought
about the first
comprehensive monograph
on
the
subject. Profusely
illustrated,
the book of
fers a
complete,
almost
encyclopedic picture
of
Dali's
work,
projects
and
writings
on film. In the
opening chapter ("Why
Film?")
Dawn Ades sets
up
the tone of the different contributions
by
em
phasizing
the
triangular interdependency among
film,
painting
and
writing
in the artist's oeuvre.
The various authors
highlight
the cinematic
perspectives
and
techniques
the
painter
utilized
on his canvases to create
multiple images, strange
atmospheres
and
destabilizing perspectives,
and
reveal the
presence
of his
paintings
in his films
as well as the existence of
symbols,
motives and
subjects
from his films in his
pictorial
work. Feix
Fanes underlines how Dali accumulated in
space
elements in a
form reminiscent of "the
sharp,
intermittent
and,
at the same
time,
rhythmic
and
dynamic expression
of
cinematographic
montage"
(37),
while Matthew Gale
points
out
the artist's
pictorial
use of cinematic
techniques
such as the
panoramic
view that embrace the
spectator
or his
provocation
of
anticipation gen
erated
by casting
a shadow
from
the
foreground,
commonly
utilized in the films of
suspense.
The
essays
dedicated to Dali's
experimental
films are
perhaps
one of the most
interesting
contributions of this
monograph, revealing
the
painter's
use of film as a
projection
of his
picto
rial
techniques
and aesthetic ideas. A film such
as
Impressions
de la Haute
Mongolie-Hommage
?
RaymondRoussel
(1974),
dealing
with a fantastic
expedition
to the
upper-Mongolia,
relies
on
extrapolated images
from the
microscopic
stains
and scratches on a
ballpoint pen
and illustrates
how Dali
recycled
old aesthetic
practices
from
his anti-artistic
period
of the
twenties,
such
as
his focus
on common
objects
to
produce images
"that were rooted in
reality
but
pushed beyond
it into an
adjacent, highly charged sphere"
(56).
The artist also added
a
typical
element
of
showmanship
to create
"painting perfor
mances" such
as
Chaos and Creation
(1960)
and LHistoire
prodigieuse
de la dentelliere et du
rhinoceros
{Prodigious History of
the Lacemaker
and the
Rhinoceros, 1954-62).
The first one,
made in collaboration with
Philippe
Halsman,
is a
documentary
that became an art work in
the
style
of
John
Cage, Georges
Mathieu or Yves
Kelin. As Helen
Sainsbury explains,
Chaos and
Creation was an
exploration
of Dalfs well-known
attitude
to
modernism and is credited with be
ing
the first artist's video. The
Prodigious History
of
The Lacemaker and the
Rhinoceros,
filmed in
collaboration with the
photographer
Robert De
scharnes,
shows Dalfs work on Vermeer's famous
painting,
which he related to the mathematical
logarithmic proportions
found in the horn of the
rhinoceros and other natural
shapes.
The work
has also
great documentary
value and
parallels
art-performances
such
as Hans Namuth's films
of
Jackson
Pollock.
In addition to the articles of Matthew
Gale on Un chien andalou
{An
Andalusian
Dog,
1929)
and
on
LAge
D'Or
(The
Golden
Age,
1930)
and to other
essays
on
Dalfs cinematic
produc
tions,
the book
provides
a
wealth of information
on
many
of his other
projects
for the silver screen
that were never
carried out or even known
by
the
public.
As Elliott H.
King points
out in the
final
chapter
of the
volume,
"the Catalan art
ist's cinematic
experiments
went well
beyond
those that have entered
popular
consciousness
or even for which we have
acknowledged
sce
narios." This was
the
case
of La Chevre sanitaire
{The
Hygienic
Goat) (1930-1),
a
script
he wrote
immediately
after
LAge
D'Or,
that echoes his
ideas
on film
already expressed
in an article of
the same
title,
and where the artist advocated
the break
up
of the
principles
of
synchronicity,
continuity
and
correspondence
in film
language,
and aimed to translate to the screen his
pictorial
paranoiac-critical
method of
discrediting
real
ity.
From 1948
to
1952 Dali
again applied
the
cinematic ideas contained in The
hygienic
Goat
to La carretilla de la came
{The
Wheelbarrow
of
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Arizona
Journal
of Hispanic
Cultural Studies 209
Flesh),
a
work in which he
effectively
utilized his
paranoiac-critical
method to create a cinematic
version of the
pictorial
double
image through
a
series of
multiple meanings. According
to her
paranoid
delirium the
protagonist constantly
reinterprets
her
fetish,
the
wheelbarrow,
which
she transforms into a
dining
table,
a
marriage
bed,
a
coffin,
a
cupboard,
a
crib,
an
altar for
prayer,
a
cross,
etc. Dalf described the film as
an
"epic crossing through
the
geological
and
archaeological sublimity
of
Spain"
(199),
and
as
indicated
by
Sanchez
Vidal,
it
may
be in
terpreted
as a cinematic version of his
Mystic
Manifesto
of 1951. The artist also extended
this
mythical approach
to his native land in Le
sang
Catalan
{Catalan Blood, 1950),
where he
put
to
good
use a
number of Catalan heroes
(Antoni Gaudf,
Narcfs
Monturiol,
Wilfredo
el
Velloso,
Ramon
Llull,
Francesc
Pujols,
etc.)
and
regional
folkloric
symbols
(the
sardana and
national
songs,
La
Sagrada
Familia,
La
Pedrera,
Las Ramblas
y
el Paseo de
Gracia,
el monasterio
de
Montserrat, etc.)
to assert Catalan
identity
and reflect "the
living reality
of
a
country
that
is,
above
all,
forgotten,
above all... violent"
(204).
Other unachieved
projects
from the thir
ties reveal Dalf s involvement with Surrealist
aes
thetics and
principles.
William
Jeffett's analysis
of the scenario for Babaouo
(1932)
examines
the
literary
discursive mechanics at work in a
filmic
language deeply
influenced
by
Surrealism
and Andre Breton's
conception
of narrative as a
series of
images,
and
by
Tristan Tzara's semantic
derangement
and
syntactic
incoherence,
as well
as
by
Freud's theories on the
language
of dreams.
Between 1931 and 1933 and
coinciding
with his
most influential moment within the Surrealist
movement and the
rupture
with his
family,
Dalf
produced
two sketches:
a
documentary, Cinq
Minutes ?
propos
du surrealism
{Five
Minutes
about
Surrealism)
to
propagate
the movement's
ideas and its roots in
psychoanalysis;
and Contre
la
famille {Against
the
Family)
(1932),
where he
envisages
the historical construction of the fam
ily
from a
psychoanalytical
and Marxist
point
of
view. As Dawn Ades
explains,
the
script
without
resolution led him to revisit the traumatic father
son
relation in his text The
Tragic Myth of
Millets
Angelus
(1963),
which
points
to the
fertilizing
effect of film not
only
on his
paintings
but also
on his
writings.
Another
speculative
exercise
was his
project
Les
Mysteres
surrealistes de New
York
(1935),
whose film scenario
appeared
in
installments in The American
Weekly.
Born out
of his first visit to New York in
1934,
the
script
scenario
curiously
recalls Federico Garcia Lorcas
somber vision of the
megalopolis
in Poet in New
York. As Matthew Gale
points
out,
Dalfs con
templation
of the
city's
violence,
sex and crime
derives from the
gangster genre,
and
specifically
from its
expression
in the silent series Les
Mysteres
de New York
(1914),
but also manifests "a sense
of
anxiety
and violence that reflects back on the
artist s
precarious position
within
Surrealism,
the
urban tension of the
city
and the
premonitions
of civil war at home"
(138).
The book also details the
painter's long
but almost fruitless love affair with
Hollywood,
which
yielded only
two
successful collabora
tions: one with Alfred Hitchcock
(Spellbound,
1945)
and another one with Walt
Disney
(Des
tino,
1946).
Other
projects
never saw
the
light
due in
part
to the artist's insistence on
strange
scenarios and bizarre stories in a
Hollywood
more
interested in
satisfying
the
average
taste of
the
public
than in
incorporating sophisticated
Surrealist demands. These thwarted
projects
include
a
filmic version of his
autobiography,
The Secret
Life of
Salvador Dali
(1942),
a humor
ous film conceived in association with the Marx
Brothers,
Giraffes
on Horseback Salad
(1937),
and
a
nightmarish
scene for Moontide
(1941),
a
film directed
by
Fritz
Lang
and
produced by
Twentieth
Century
Fox. Dalfs
project
with the
Marx
Brothers, says
Michael R.
Taylor,
reveals
his "subversive aim to introduce his delusional
fears and erotic fantasies to mainstream
Holly
wood audiences"
(146).
As Sara Cochran
states
in her
essay
on
Spellbound,
"if
Hollywood
had
a
place
for his
creativity,
it was a
marginal
one:
the
space
of
fantasy
and
nightmares"
(184).
Even
so, Destino was shelved and had to wait until
the 2003
to be
completed
and
publicly
shown.
But
perhaps
this
long
list of
"unaccomplished"
films
provide testimony
to Dalfs
persistent
interest in cinematic
work,
"due
largely
to his
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210 Arizona
Journal
of Hispanic
Cultural Studies
habit of
recuperating
details from
past projects,
most of which had
gone
unrealised"
(216).
In
1983,
unhappy
with what he
regarded
as the
overly complicated process
of
Hollywood
film
making,
Dalf tried to
get
Luis Bunuel interested
in his last cinematic
project,
The Little
Demon,
with the
hope
that
working again
with his
early
partner
the movie could be finished in less than
two
weeks,
but as Elliott
King points
out,
it was
too late. On
July
29 1983,
a
few months after
rejecting
his
offer,
Bunuel
died,
and with him
Dali's last cinematic
aspirations.
As often is the case in this
type
of collec
tive
monographs,
Dali and Film does not
pro
vide
a
unified critical
perspective
on
the
subject,
but it
certainly
offers a solid informative basis to
elaborate a coherent
interpretation
of the artist's
multifaceted cinematic oeuvre and
complex
life
long
relation with the world of cinema. Scholars
of
Dalf,
Surrealism and film will find in this book
a
variety
of useful research tools
(cinematic
chro
nology, filmography, bibliography,
etc.)
as well
as numerous
topics
of
inspiration
and reflection.
Carmen Garcia de la Rasilla
University of
New
Hampshire
The Borders Within: Encounters
Between Mexico and the U.S.
The
University
of Arizona
Press,
2008
By Douglas Monroy
The Borders Within is a
book written
by
a sea
soned educator.
Monroy
has taken
a
politically
and
historically
controversial
subject
matter,
personalized
it,
elucidated it
using
non-academic
language,
and has offered
us a meditation on
human
misconceptions
and
compassion.
The au
thor's non-linear historical
approach
underscores
the
premises
that make this
publication timely
in
light
of the deaths
occurring
in the
landscape
shared
by
both countries as
migrants attempt
to cross from south
to north. His discussion on
"Woodrow Wilson's Guns" and "The Missions
of California" sheds
light
on the
intimately
in
terwoven
history
of both countries. While the
chapter
on
"Ramona,
I Love
you" emphasizes
that this
intimacy
nuances not
only
institutional
power
relations but most
importantly
the con
ceptions
that the
peoples
of the two nations have
of each other. On the other
hand,
the
chapters,
"NAFTA and the New World
Border,"
"Re
creating
Californio Rancho
Society"
and
"
How
the New World Border
Changes
Us,"
highlight
what the author will come back to
throughout
the book: "that more
and more
people,
as
they
are,
are
worthy
of moral consideration."
(19)
In
chapter
one, "NAFTA and the New
World
Border,"
the author discusses the
capitalist
underpinnings
of NAFTA
by referring
to
Joseph
Schumpeter
s notion of "creative
destruction,"
whereby
destruction of established economic
systems
take
place
from
within,
giving
rise to
new ones.
Monroy
also refers to Andre Gunder
Frank who has underscored that
capitalism
does
not have the same effect
everywhere; creativity
therefore,
is not intrinsic to destruction. Andre
Gunder Frank has
argued
that in countries not
members of the First World
capitalism
leads
to
"developing underdevelopment."
In a Latin
American
scenario,
treatises such as
NAFTA,
where the relations of
power
are
unequal
from
the
ground
up,
what is a
profit opportunity
for
government
subsidized farmers in the U.S.
becomes the destruction of local traditional
labor-intensive
production
in Mexico. The
irony,
underscores
Monroy,
is that those undercut
head
north,
or
(and
here he
fearlessly steps
into
a
mined
field)
working
the idea of
"comparative
advantage,'
erect an
industry
to
provide
that
for which there is
great
demand in the north:
illegal drugs.
The effects of
institutionally
driven his
tory
are but the
beginning
of
Monroy's study.
Throughout
the book his
quest
for
greater
un
derstanding
of the intimate links between the
peoples
leads him to
interesting findings.
He
deconstructs the
pastoral imagery
of Californio
society,
"Mexican landed elites"
(71),
which
seems intrinsic to the idea of
California,
in
order to reveal the
origins
of said
lifestyle.
He
intervenes in the
identity-building
narrative
with accounts of the
disputed
Indians'
physical
and
spiritual
abuse,
and Indian
uprisings
that
were in
part brought
about
by
the "coercive
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