Salvador Dalí Goes to Hollywood & Creates a Wild Dream Sequence for Alfred Hitchcock

Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel report­ed­ly automobile­ried rocks of their pock­ets dur­ing the pre­miere of their first movie Un Chien Andalou, antic­i­pat­ing a vio­lent reac­tion from the audi­ence.

It was a good con­cern. The film is perhaps nearly 90 years outdated however it nonetheless has the pow­er to professional­voke – the movie fea­tures a shot of a lady get­ting her eye slashed open with a straight razor in spite of everything. Because it turned out, rocks weren’t want­ed. The audi­ence, crammed with such avant-garde lumi­nar­ies as Pablo Picas­so and André Bre­ton appreciated the movie. A dis­ap­level­ed Dalí lat­er report­ed that the night time was “much less excit­ing” than he had hoped.

Un Chien Andalou fea­tured lots of Dalí’s visu­al obses­sions – eye­balls, ants crawl­ing out of ori­fices and decay­ting ani­mals. Dalí delight­ed in shock­ing and incit­ing peo­ple together with his gor­geous, dis­turb­ing pictures. And he beloved grandiose spec­ta­cles like a riot at a film the­ater.

Dalí and Buñuel’s subsequent film, the caus­tic L’Age d’or, uncovered the dif­fer­ences between the 2 artists and their cre­ative half­ner­ship implod­ed in pre-pro­duc­tion. Buñuel went on to make a string of sub­ver­sive mas­ter­items like Land With­out Bread, The Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel and The Dis­creet Allure of the Bour­geoisie; Dalí massive­ly stop movie in favor of his beau­ti­ful­ly craft­ed paint­ings.

Then Hol­ly­wooden got here name­ing.

Alfred Hitch­cock employed Dalí to cre­ate a dream sequence for his 1945 film Spell­sure. Dalí craft­ed over 20 min­utes of footage of which tough­ly 4 and a half min­utes made it into the film. “I need­ed to con­vey the dream with nice visu­al sharp­ness and readability–sharper than movie itself,” Hitch­cock defined to Fran­cois Truf­faut in 1962. The sequence, which you’ll be able to see up prime, is crammed with all kinds of Daliesque motifs – slashed eye­balls, bare ladies and phan­tas­magoric land­scapes. It is usually probably the most mem­o­rable a part of an oth­er­smart minor work by Hitch­cock.

Dalí’s fol­low-up movie work was for, of all issues, the Vin­cente Min­nel­li com­e­dy Father of the Bride (1950). Spencer Tra­cy performs Stan­ley Banks whose beau­ti­ful daugh­ter (Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor, no much less) is get­ting mar­ried. As Stanley’s anx­i­ety over the impend­ing nup­tials spi­rals, he has one very bizarre night time­mare. Cue Dalí. Stan­ley is late to the wed­ding. As he rush­es down the aisle, his garments mys­te­ri­ous­ly get shred­ded by the tiled flooring that bounces and con­torts like a chunk of flesh.

This dream sequence, which you’ll be able to see imme­di­ate­ly above, has few of the visu­al flour­ish­es of Spell­sure, however it nonetheless has plen­ty of Dalí’s commerce­mark bizarre­ness. These float­ing accusato­ry eyes. The way in which that Tracy’s leg appears to stretch. That flooring.

Father of the Bride marked the tip of Dalí’s work in Hol­ly­wooden, although there have been a cou­ple poten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tions that will have been amaz­ing had they actu­al­ly hap­pened. Dalí had an thought for a film with the Marx Broth­ers known as Giraffes on Horse­again Sal­advert. The film would have “includ­ed a scene of giraffes put on­ing gasoline masks and one in every of Chico sport­ing a deep-div­ing go well with whereas play­ing the piano.” Although Har­po was report­ed­ly enthu­si­as­tic in regards to the professional­posed thought, Grou­cho wasn’t and the concept unhappy­ly got here to noth­ing.

Lat­er in life, Dalí grew to become a repair­ture on the speak present cir­cuit. On the Dick Cavett Present in 1970, he flung an anteater at Lil­lian Gish.

Be aware: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this submit appeared on our website in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Alfred Hitch­cock Recollects Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­sure: “No, You Can’t Pour Reside Ants All Over Ingrid Bergman!”

Sal­vador Dalí Strolls onto The Dick Cavett Present with an Anteater, Then Talks About Desires & Sur­re­al­ism, the Gold­en Ratio & Extra (1970)

Alfred Hitch­cock Recollects Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­sure

37 Hitch­cock Cameo Seem­ances Over 50 Years: All in One Video

Two Vin­tage Movies by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

Jonathan Crow is a author and movie­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wooden Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. Y