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One of the first French surrealist films was Un Chien Andalou directed by Bunuel and Dali. A spine-chilling image permanently burned into the brain of anyone who has ever seen this text is a razor blade slicing across a woman's eye. This short film -- which also features a man poking at a severed hand and ants emerging from a hole in a man's palm, presents 17 minutes packed with absurdist humor, surreal discontinuity of time and space, dream imagery, and Freudian symbolism. .
Bunuel worked to jolt viewers out of the passive inactivity that he felt movies induced: "Sitting comfortably in a dark room, dazzled by the light and the movement which exert a quasi-hypnotic power." .
Although Bunuel's career spanned five decades, five countries, and varying styles and subject matters, certain fundamental aspects of his unique vision remained constant. He was always preoccupied with eroticism and death. His imagery is often blasphemous, a reflection of his Catholic education and his subsequent rejection of it. Once, when asked to produce a commercial for a beverage company, Bunuel suggested a scene in which a Roman soldier offers a bottle of the advertised mineral water to a thirsty Christ hanging on the cross. .
In film Cocteau could bring his Surrealist language and imagery together, making the dreamlike obvious and present. La Belle et La Bete by Jean Cocteau is an extremely ideological fantasy film that does have certain surrealist sensibilities. Towards the end of the film when belle realsies her love for the beast we can see clearly that Cocteau believes in the moral phrase, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." The film revolves around the desire for that which the Beast cannot have. The Beast has riches and vast wealth but can't obtain what he needs most, love. The deceptive nature of man is evident in this film; Avenant is portrayed as self obsessed and represents narcissism. We start to question the morals of Avenant's character after he proposes to beauty at the beginning of the story.
