La Folie du Docteur Tube - 1915

Country: France

Director: Abel Gance

Writer: Abel Gance

Stars: Albert Dieudonné

Also known as: La follia del dottor Tube (Italy)

Production Co: Le Film d'Art

Runtime: USA: 6 min  | USA: 10 min (DVD version)

Sound Mix: Silent

Color: Black and White

Genres: Short

In this early short film from the pioneering Abel Gance, a scientist playing around with some white powder in his lab, begins either changing his body or how he sees the world, I couldn't figure out which. Regardless, this allows Gance to use trick mirrors to distort the picture. Then more people wander in, more powder gets thrown around, more distortion (until 80% of the screen is incomprehensible), until things are finally restored to normal.  

La Coquille et le Clergyman - 1928

Country: France

Director: Germaine Dulac

Writer: Antonin Artaud, Germaine Dulac (uncredited)

Stars: Alex Allin, Genica Athanasiou and Lucien Bataille

Also known as: A kagyló és a lelkész (Hungary), El clérigo y la caracola (Argentina),

Muszelka i pastor (Poland), The Seashell and the Clergyman (International - English title)

Filming Locations: Paris, France

Production Co: Délia Film

Sound Mix: Silent

Color: Black and White

Trivia

The British Board of Film Censors banned this film in the UK in 1927, saying, "This film is so obscure as to have no apparent meaning. If there is a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable."

At the film's premier, writer Antonin Artaud, who was obviously not pleased by what director Germaine Dulac did to his screenplay, shouted at the screen, calling her a cow.

Plot Keywords: Lust | Nudity | Surrealism | Seashell | Obsession  |  Female Nudity | Controversy | Avant Garde | Priest

Genres: Short

Obsessed with a general's woman, a clergyman has strange visions of death and lust, struggling against his own eroticism.

The predecessor of Un Chien Andalou and directed by the lone woman filmmaker of her time, La Coquille et le Clergyman is one of the most celebrated of French avant-garde movies of the '20s, partly because Antonin Artaud wrote the script, partly because the British censor of the time banned it with the legendary words 'If this film has a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable'. Artaud was reputedly unhappy with Dulac's realization of his scenario, and it's true that the story's anti-clericalism (a priest develops a lustful passion that plunges him into bizarre fantasies) is somewhat undermined by the director's determined visual lyricism. But the fragmentation of the narrative and the innovative imagery remain provocative, and the film is of course fascinating testimony to the currents of its time.