Best surreal movies

I'm surprised Suspiria hasn't been mentioned.

"They have dropped the cow, ladies and gentlemen!!!"



As filmmakers? Sure. No doubt. There's a reason why the film I posted above is almost completely unavailable anywhere. But as a visual composer? Hm, little dicey, but I got to give that one to Dali in his purest medium.

I do find Dali overrated in all mediums. In painting, he is dwarfed by René Magritte, both in style and substance. At least in my eyes.

I don't see a lot to compare between these singular artists. Like comparing Cage and Coltrane.

I don't see what is surreal about any of those. I'd put forward:

Hausu (House) (1977)
The Holy Mountain
El Topo
Most Lynch films
Synechdoche, New York
DogTooth
A Field in England
Holy Motors

Guy Maddin films
Roy Andersson films

Maybe even Daisies and The Color of Pomegranates

Terminator Salvation
Newsies
and uh....
The Dark Knight Rises

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"My Dionne Warwick understanding of your dream indicates that you are ambivalent on how you want life to eventually screw you." - Joel

"Ever try to forcibly pin down a house cat? It's not easy." - Captain Steel

"I just can't get pass sticking a finger up a dog's butt." - John Dumbear

The Dark Knight Rises? How is that one surreal?

It feels like a fever dream. Nothing makes sense.

To be fair, this isn't something you see every day while walking down the street.

He was being facetious.

I'm mostly comparing Bunuel's brand of film surrealism against Dali's painted version. And I've never really been much of a fan of Dali's work. The guy obviously had a brilliant mind, but I find his visual interpretations of 'dream states' to be somewhat hollow. And even his style, frequently indebted to classical techniques, and artists like Velasquez, is not really my bag. Outside of Caravaggio, I don't really respond to those more rigidly formal ways of painting.



I do like some of his work. He has a couple of paintings of crucifixions that I think are pretty wonderful, and I don't mind those elements of his paintings were he has laboured over more informal shapes that are hard to identify. In those cases he is getting to the kind of surrealism that has some kind of emotional hooks for me. Usually though, his strange subjects, rendered in classical traditions, leaves me pretty cold (which, kind of goes against what I said about film surrealism working best when grounded in a reality, but what can you do, I am a man of contradicitions)



Much like Warhol, I am much more interested in Dali himself being a made up construct of his artistic mind. But unlike Warhol, I don't feel even that is quite enough to make him an artist I really want to spend much time thinking about. Nice moustache though.

WHAT about my face??

*angry grrrrr gif*

I love that you single that one out. Like, "Newsies? OBVIOUSLY!!!! But yn is crossing a line there with Batman....."

Yeah, but he had a fear of orifices though. Dentata all the way around. That's not.....real, exactly.

@ynwtf Haven't seen the other two.

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My favorite films are Death Bed and Alice. I have already reviewed it several times and always advise my friends to look. Certainly not all people will watch such films.

Is this the Svankmajer?

You have a point. Yet in 1945 Dali was the perfect selection to design the surrealistic dream sequences in Hitchcock's Spellbound. American audiences were not real familiar with the style, so the sequences were very effective then, despite the fact that much of it was edited out.

Hitchcock could have engaged Man Ray or Duchamp just as easily, but Hitchcock always favored the biggest names in most of his films.

Of course in our modern times Dali's brand of surrealism used for a dream sequence would be pretty laughable.

N.B. I've always been a fan of Dali's work. I saw some of his huge canvases in the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, and they really knocked me out.

Lots of great choices in here.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned:

Fellini Satyricon, which I've always felt was a bit underrated.