Dada, Surrealism, and the Cinematic Effect - (Film and Media Studies) by R Bruce Elder (Paperback)

DADA, Surrealism, and the Cinematic Effect is a groundbreaking book that explores the early intellectual reception of cinema and its impact on art theorists, philosophers, cultural theorists, and artists of the first decades of the 20th century.

The author argues that while the idea persists that early writers on film were troubled by its lowly form, there was another, largely unrecognized strain in the reception of it - that the cinema was the most important art for moderns, exemplifying the vibrancy of contemporary life.

This book examines the Dada and Surrealist movements as responses to the advent of cinema, providing a readable and informative account of how these avant-garde movements recast the art media and their urgency of doing so formed the principal part of the conceptual core of their artistic programs.

The author's analysis of Duchamp's Anémic cinema, Man Ray's Retour à la raison and Emak Bakia, and Buñuel's Un chien andalou and Las Hurdes is particularly insightful, as well as his intricate explication of Ernst's cinematic collage novels, which he relates as models for Lawrence Jordan's surrealist films.

This book casts the early twentieth-century avant-garde in a very new light, making it an essential read for anyone interested in the intersection of art and film.