Surrealists allowed the images of the subconscious to surface undisturbed so that their meaning could then be deciphered through analysis. They wanted to faithfully represent these images as a link between the abstract spiritual realities, and the real forms of the material world. To them, the object stood as a metaphor for an inner reality. Through metaphor the world could be understood, not by looking at the objects, but by looking into them.

Every profession has its own history in which the accumulation of knowledge is the basis to push the frontiers into the unknown. Dali and Picasso are two masters who stand at the front of two opposite approaches to art in the Twentieth Century. Dali embraced all the science of painting as a way to study the psyche through subconscious images. He called this process the Paranoiac Critical Method. As any paranoiac, the artist should allow these images to reach the conscience, and then do what the paranoiac cannot do: Freeze them on canvas to give consciousness the opportunity to compre

In Blue Velvet by David Lynch the innocent but inquisitive Jeffrey Beaumont comes home from school only to find himself in the middle of a criminal investigation. As he becomes obsessively involved, his own high-school sweetheart cannot help but wonder if he’s a "detective or a pervert." In fact, we can make no such distinction in Lynch’s world. To enter it is to become unwittingly implicated in its perversions. This is truly a disturbing piece of surrealism.

Cocteau had many personal issues when creating La Belle et La Bete that have come across in the ideology of the film. He was openly gay, something unheard of in the 1940s and also suffered from a physical illness, which disfigured his face. The Beast is a reflection upon Cocteau, a stranger in society whom lacks self-esteem. Until Beauty spends time with the Beast she is put off by his repulsive features, this signifies how society judges people on their appearance before getting acquainted with them.

Cocteau is an auteur as his part in the creation of surrealist art has influenced contemporary filmmakers. Cocteau is first and foremost a writer and his skill as a writer serves the film well. The dialogue, particularly that involving the Beauty and the Beast, is pure poetry. The dialogue fits the characters perfectly, and it is neither overly sentimental nor childish. Of course, Cocteau is well served by some great acting talent, in the form of Jean Marais and Josette Day as the lead characters.

Although Bunuel's career spanned five decades, five countries, and varying styles and subject matters, certain fundamental aspects of his unique vision remained constant. He was always preoccupied with eroticism and death. His imagery is often blasphemous, a reflection of his Catholic education and his subsequent rejection of it. Once, when asked to produce a commercial for a beverage company, Bunuel suggested a scene in which a Roman soldier offers a bottle of the advertised mineral water to a thirsty Christ hanging on the cross.

The surrealists of today recognise the difficulties that their movement has faced during the second half of the Twentieth Century as it attempted to become a major cultural force, like modernism had. The United States, a country in which the business community never had to share its power with the upper classes, wholeheartedly embraced abstraction and modernism. They shared the belief of abstract artists that the chaos of action painting

Some topics in this essay:
Bunuel Dali, La Bete, Jan Svankmajer, , Phantom Liberty, Finally Bunuel, Jeffrey Beaumont, Twentieth Century, Josette Day, Beast Beast, la bete, et la bete, belle et la, la belle, la belle et, et la, belle et, twentieth century, evident film, dream world, surrealist film,