I don t think any of those are surrealist movies, surrealist movies are movies like:
Brazil
Mulholland drive
Inland empire
Lost highway
Somewhere in time
Videodrome

Huh, I'll have to track his work down.

Mmm. There's the stuff.

Thank you. I am, and have rattled many a cousin with my choices.


Now to torture you normies, here's a Dali film that he usurped from narrator Orson Welles. Don't be afraid. It's soft.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-4D8dfRrrQ

Re: Best surreal movies
 

Return to Reason (1923)
Ballet Mecanique (1924)
Entr'acte (1924)
Ghosts Before Breakfast (1928)
The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra (1928)
The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928)
The Starfish (1928)
Un Chien Andalou (1929)

Oh, also L'année dernière à Marienbad, of course.

Doh. This is what I get for not checking my spelling.

C'est la surreal.

Ya know, I loved this movie and yet, oddly, I didn't think of it as surrealist for some reason, even though it's hard to not call it that. Weird.

Re: Best surreal movies
 

While I think for most who are asking for surrealistic films, it is usually enough to point them in the direction of the odd or the whimsical. But as Flicker pointed out, it is generally a little more than just that, and for my two cents, films that are just generally strange don't quite cut it for me. For a film to really work as a piece of surrealism, as far as I'm concern, it has to commit some kind of violence of rapture of the relatable or the mundane. And a lot of films that are simply strange for strange sake don't really do this, as they don't establish any reality to disrupt in the first place. Or the surrealistic intrusions are much too lazy for them to cause a viewer to doubt there senses as they are watching (I call this brand 'Just Add Zebra Surrealism', in that it seems to think simply throwing in something that doesn't belong is enough). This is why I think whoever suggested Apocalypse Now as a contender is right in considering that a part of the genre. It builds its sense of reality by hemming fairly close to how a war film feels. And yet, when you start introducing lieutenants ordering their troops to surf during an air raid, and a bloated Marlon Brando speaking great wisdom that doesn't make any sense, it puts the viewer in the position of having to decide how much of what they see can be trusted. Surrealism, when it is effective, should cause some amount of disruption of passive viewing. In a lot of ways, surrealistic artists kind of gaslight their audience.


There have been a couple of films here, that while I think are definitely surrealistic, don't at first glance actually qualify for the definition I provided above. Eraserhead, as an example, never technically gives us any sense that the world we are watching has anything whatsoever to do with our own. And in that way its grotesqueries and non-sequiter scenes seem like they fit in such a world, and therefore, are less likely to cause that fundamental level of confusion in those watching. But, while Eraserheads world is clearly a fiction, Lynch employs so many pregnant pauses and drawn out scenes he creates his disorienting effects here. Much too much credit is given to deformed babies and ladies in radiators as the source of Eraserhead's discombobulation, but the heart of the films surrealism is actually more to be found living in the sparse sound design which seems all too familiar to the lives of the lonely, or the long lingering gazes at elevator doors that take forever to open. This is where he allows some feeling of realism to seep into the dreamscape of his film. Real life is what seems out of place here.


It is by this simliar token that I also feel obligated to bring some amount of criticism to the most celebrated of all surrealists, Jodorowsky. I think by definition he has to apply, but personally, I think he's a pretty piss poor surrealist, in that his entire worlds are competely warped by his imagination. There is no basic reality to pervert. This doesn't mean he's not a great filmmaker. He is. But his power lies mostly in his incredible strengths as an imagist, which while surreal in nature, don't lend to an overall sense of surrealism. Or at least not a very good one.



Most surrealistic films I would recommend have already been listed (Marienbad and Meshes of the Afternoon being pretty strong contenders). Also, I don't know of L'Age D'Or has been mentioned, but it should be (even though it isn't a personal favorite of mine). Also Bunuel > Dali by a country mile.


If I think of anything off the beaten track, I will list them here. So far the only one that is coming to mind right now though, and I wouldn'tn even call it a purely surreal film (even if it slowly degrades into something that becomes harder and harder to comprehend) is the little seen horror movie Eyes of Fire. But there are generally only really bad copies of it available, which might put some off due to the terrible image resolution.

I've always loved Berberian Sound Studio, and find it surreal by the dictionary definition of what surreal is.

(edit - also, Don't Look Now.)

Yes, this is a good one that I always forget about.

Re: Best surreal movies
 

the Waking Life (Not to be confused with THe Walking Dead) is one of the more interesting movies

Re: Best surreal movies
 

The Strange Color of your Body's Tears
Uzumaki
The Colossus of New York
Muriel, or the Time of Return (Light surrealism, more in technique than plot)
Millenium Actress
Messiah of Evil
Fantastic Planet and Gandahar
The Congress (Part animated and part live action is the big surrealist element here)
Robot Carnival/Neo tokyo/Memories (Animated anthologies, with strong surrealist elements)
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
Berberian Sound Studio (Light surreal tones)
I Love You, I Love You (The movie Eternal Sunshine is based on)
Angel's Egg (This one definitely leans on abstract, or you can see it as a sequence of surreal images.

Nicholas Roeg needs a special shoutout here. His surrealism is sometimes very subtle, but he's a master at blurring perception and introducing dream/distortions into his montages/flashbacks. Performance is a perfect example of his shaking notions of reality in a strikingly (but not garishly) psychological manner. Others of his along these lines: Walkabout, Man Who Fell To Earth, Bad Timing, Eureka, Track 29. I have to stop somewhere because I could easily recommend everything he's done.

Re: Best surreal movies
 

Forgot to mention:
LUIS BUNUEL S Belle De jour
One of the best surrealist films ever

Bunuel in general. My favourite is The Exterminating Angel.

Re: Best surreal movies
 

I admit to being a bit confused about what surreal is, but Dementia (1955) belongs in there somewhere. It's one of those movies I watch because it's so... surreal?

Surrealism is deformed reality. When a movie has grounding in tangible understandable, logical reality that becomes frayed or illogical, or includes these elements from the start, in ways that are not generally acknowledged as weird by the characters, that is surrealism.

That's a really good definition! It also fits Dementia/Daughter of Horror perfectly.

Re: Best surreal movies
 

Since people are saying it's hard to define surrealism, I'm not sure if they mean they don't know the literal definition, so I'll just point it out:
The definition of "surreal" is to pertain to dreams or be dreamlike. Which, I don't think defining the word is the challenging part. Trying to come up with a criterions as to what qualifies as such and then applying them, certainly can be.

I'll just toss it out there, this is different than "abstract", Though surrealism often deals with abstract imagery or concepts and abstractions can often feel surreal.
Trying to think of how to define abstract is actually more difficult for me to express. I think, looking at m-w, the two definitions that seem relevant would be:
disassociated from any specific instance
expressing a quality apart from an object
I mention this because that's the other descriptor that people just associate with "weird images." Unfortunately the concrete reference points I have for the term are technical in nature and probably of not much use to people here for clarifying much.

Also, I'd say my favorite surreal films are 8 1/2, Mulholland Drive, and The Trial. Are they the best examples? :shrugs: IDK.

I'll mention, one category of movies that often get described as a surreal are ones with ethereal tones (though often not the most defining examples), because there's something about the disconnectedness that reminds people of how they feel in their dreams where, they're a little disconnected from what's happening.