30 Salvador Dali — Liquid Desire The Sunday Age 2009

The silver screen Jim Schembri

Visions through the camera’s eye 2009 The Sunday Age Salvador Dali — Liquid Desire 31

Despite his early enthusiasm for the art, Dali ultimately failed as a filmmaker.

ven now, some 80 years hence, the images in Salvador Dali’s first film adventure, Un Chien andalou, shimmer and E shudder with undiminished power. The ants crawling out of a living hand. The dead donkeys on the pianos. The man’s mouth being replaced by the woman’s armpit hair. And, of course, that slitting of the eyeball with a razor. It is testament to the vision Dali shared with director Luis Bunuel that this one image Above: A Dali drawing for a proposed Marx remains one of the most shocking and Brothers project titled Giraffes on Horseback memorable in cinema history. Salad. From the book Dali & Film, published by Dali and film were a natural fit. Tate Publishing, 2007. An avid movie fan since childhood, he recognised early on how the aesthetic he pursued in his painting — of giving solid, photo-realistic form to surreal landscapes — could be better served by the camera than the canvas. He signalled this Dali never recovered. Bunuel went Above: sequence containing key plot points. enthusiasm in a 1927 letter to Bunuel. on to become of the most influential Thus, the film turns out Still from the film Although the film’s budget forced “Cinema, through its rich technical filmmakers of the 20th century while Un Chien andalou, him to scale down his original concept, resources, can give us the concrete and Dali’s dalliances with cinema were to be pure illustration 1929 Dali worked diligently on the sequence exciting vision of the most grandiose marked by frustration, compromise and of what the artist of gelatin silver with Hitchcock and produced a set piece and sublime spectacles that were until outright failure. It is positively painful to photograph that the director liked but that producer 12.8 x 18.0 cm now the unique privilege of man’s ponder what a career-long collaboration genius imagines. David O Selznick thought looked cheap SALVADOR DALI France imagination. Thus, the film turns out to between the two art-school friends could Fundacio Gala- and tacky. He ordered an extensive be pure illustration of what the artist of have produced. Salvador Dali, reshoot, designed and supervised by genius imagines.” Dali had long been ready for Inspired by a meeting with Harpo Figueres. William Cameron Menzies, an art Un Chien andalou perfectly fulfilled Hollywood — and Hollywood was on the set of A Day at the Races, Dali © Salvador Dali, director with whom Selznick had Dali’s vision of what the new medium ready for him. “I have heard the word wrote Giraffes on Horseback Salad for the Fundacio Gala- worked on Gone with the Wind. This could achieve. Unfortunately, it remains surrealism in every mouth,” he said in Marx Brothers, a surrealist film about a Salvador Dali, is what was used in Spellbound. The the only film to which Dali can claim his 1937 essay Surrealism in Hollywood, wealthy woman who realises her most VISCOPY 2009. credit line, which read that the dream true authorship. and saw the Gary Cooper filmsPeter elaborate fantasies. Dali produced some sequence was “based on designs by Though L’Age D’or (1930) is often cited Ibbetson (1935) and Mr Deeds Goes to stunning concept drawings involving Salvador Dali” was a backhanded tribute as his next collaboration with Bunuel, Town (1936) as prime examples of burning giraffes, battalions of cyclists and to how Dali’s name and notoriety had Dali’s input was minimal. Distracted surreal cinema. Groucho as the Hindu god Shiva. The more publicity value than his work. Visions through the by his new relationship with his muse He also loved the irrational comic project died, however, when Groucho Notably, the one-minute nightmare Gala, Dali largely surrendered control of logic of American screen comedy, works deemed that it simply wasn’t funny. Opposite page: sequence in the 1950 Vincente Minnelli the film to Bunuel, who rejected most Dali regarded as being “the only ones to Dali’s most famous Hollywood The eyes have it: comedy Father of the Bride is often one of the most of Dali’s ideas and even removed Dali’s show the true path to poetry”. He adored work is also his most misunderstood. controversial attributed to having been designed by name from the film’s credits. Dali was the Marx Brothers filmAnimal Crackers In 1944 Alfred Hitchcock, himself new scenes from Dali. Yet while the vision of Spencer camera’s eye furious and the dispute ended their and became infatuated with the anarchic to Hollywood, commissioned Dali Dali’s collaboration Tracy sinking into the church floor as he relationship, both as artists and as friends. Harpo, whom Dali considered a “true to provide his psychological thriller with Luis Bunuel, stumbles towards the altar is certainly It proved a setback from which surrealist”. Spellbound with a three-minute dream Un Chien andalou. Continued page 32 32 Salvador Dali — Liquid Desire The Sunday Age 2009

The silver screen Jim Schembri

Far left: Dali painting White Telephone and Ruins for the 1946 Walt Disney filmDestino . Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres. © Salvador Dali, Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, VISCOPY 2009. Middle left: Two stills from Dali’s work on Alfred Hitchcock’s filmSpellbound . Left: Dali was a fan of the Marx Brothers and considered Harpo a “true surrealist”. From the book Dali & Film, published by Tate Publishing, 2007.

studio from collapse. It was a sad case of 1979. “It is a secondary form because too Dali being in the right place at the wrong many people are involved in its creation. time. The only true means of producing a The Oscar-nominated animated work of art is painting, in which only short Destino produced in 2003 was an the eye and the point of the brush are extrapolation based on Dali’s concept employed.” paintings and incorporating the Perhaps Dali was a victim of his own while Disney had shown his flair for completed clip. As with the Spellbound imagination. His cinematic concepts surreal imagery in Dumbo, Pinocchio sequence, it is not strictly a work by were certainly ahead of their time. The and Fantasia. Salvador Dali. technological limits that rendered much With the animated project Destino, After his “Hollywood period” Dali of his work too expensive or unfilmable at Dali hoped Disney’s audience reach largely abandoned cinema, but his love the time — burning giraffes? Groucho as would help take his brand of surrealism for film fermented into a love for the Shiva? — these could be easily achieved to the masses. Working at the studio, Dali camera — any camera — with himself today through digital animation. did not want for artistic freedom. Teamed as star. The 1967 mock-documentary Given his passion for cinema, it From page 31 with animator John Hench he produced A Soft-Self Portrait of Salvador Dali remains a bitter irony that at the heart Daliesque, the claim remains dubious as a 15-second animated sequence in which perfectly captured his embrace of of his dizzying, brilliant career is a hole the film’s credits do not mention him. two heads mounted on tortoises meet to self-agrandising Warholian celebrity. in the shape of a filmmaker. It seems Dali’s meeting in 1945 with Walt form the figure of a ballerina. Meaningful film work no longer that not even the self-proclaimed genius Disney seemed the most inevitable. Nothing more was shot of Destino; interested him. His vision of cinema of Salvador Dali could hack the grind of Lauding his Silly Symphonies as Disney’s financial woes caused him to had soured. what it takes to make a movie. “dazzling cataclysmic rainbows”, Dali shelve the project to pursue commercial “I don’t believe that cinema can ever Jim Schembri is an Age columnist shared Disney’s devotion to populism films such asCinderella , which saved the become an artistic form,” he said in and film critic