"In 1929 Dali and Bunuel produced a seventeen-minute filmUn chien andalou. On its first screening, Georges Bataille referred to it as "that extraordinary film ... penetrating so deeply into horror." Its script is said to be based on two dream images - a woman's eye slit by a razor, ants emerging from a hole in a man's hand, and the film shocked audiences. It continues to fascinate, provoke, attract and alienate its viewers - and to influence filmmakers. Elza Adamowicz's lucid critical guide to this most enigmatic of works takes new approaches to the film. It reviews, for example, its openness to so many readings and interpretations; it reassesses Dali and Bunuel's account of the film as a model surrealist work and its reception by the surrealist group, and examines both the unresolved tensions within the film itself and the role of the viewer, as detective or dreamer?"--Publisher's website.

From acclaimed author Scott Eyman comes the fascinating story of how the transition from silent films to ‘talkies’ transformed Hollywood. It was the end of an era. It was a turbulent, colorful, and altogether remarkable period, four short years in which America’s most popular industry reinvented itself. Here is the epic story of the transition from silent films to talkies, that moment when movies were totally transformed and the American public cemented its love affair with Hollywood. As Scott Eyman demonstrates in his fascinating account of this exciting era, it was a time when fortunes, careers, and lives were made and lost, when the American film industry came fully into its own. In this mixture of cultural and social history that is both scholarly and vastly entertaining, Eyman dispels the myths and gives us the missing chapter in the history of Hollywood, the ribbon of dreams by which America conquered the world.

"An important contribution to film theory. . . . Williams has a fluid, assured style. She is clearly in command of the subject. She's made a strong and original argument for the psychoanalytic basis of Surrealism."--James Monaco, author of The New Wave

Dali was one of the most famous and also one of the most notorious artists of the 20th century, his flamboyant personal style establishing him as a showman in the popular imagination. This book presents both the major works that reflect Dali's preoccupation with film and material related to the key film projects on which he worked."

ONE OF THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER'S 100 GREATEST FILM BOOKS OF ALL TIME • A provocative memoir from Luis Buñuel, the Academy Award winning creator of some of modern cinema's most important films, from Un Chien Andalou to The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Luis Buñuel’s films have the power to shock, inspire, and reinvent our world. Now, in a memoir that carries all the surrealism and subversion of his cinema, Buñuel turns his artistic gaze inward. In swift and generous prose, Buñuel traces the surprising contours of his life, from the Good Friday drumbeats of his childhood to the dreams that inspired his most famous films to his turbulent friendships with Federico García Lorca and Salvador Dalí. His personal narratives also encompass the pressing political issues of his time, many of which still haunt us today—the specter of fascism, the culture wars, the nuclear bomb. Filled with film trivia, framed by Buñuel’s intellect and wit, this is essential reading for fans of cinema and for anyone who has ever wanted to see the world through a surrealist’s eyes.

This groundbreaking collection of thirteen original essays analyzes connections between film and two highly influential twentieth-century movements.