Page 259 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

the unconscious, irrationalism and psychical automatism, the transposition of oneiric images, planes
and sequences without any apparent logical connection', 1 ' came to find a precise political context and
use. In such a way, the surrealist work of the mid-1920s onwards, which had drawn on 'the world of
What was the counter-attack against such a front? Initially through controversy and bannings in
the case of your films and others. And then, perhaps, in the subsequent readings of surrealism (roughly
at the time that Un Chien Andalou and LAge d'Or were properly back in circulation). Critical writing
on your work did not help - the films are considered, and continue to be considered, in a fashion
almost completely removed from their socio-political contexts. Linda Williams, in surveying rhe
critical responses to this work in 1980, delineated two poles:

(i) the psychoanalytical discourse of unconscious desire as represented by the dreamlike
images of Un Chien Andalou and (ii) the broader, more distanced, anthropological discourse
on the myths that animate social and political groups as represented by LAge d'Or.16

The majority of critical responses have engaged with the first of these elements through a variety of
psychoanalytical theoretical frameworks — the very area that was then to come under the scrutiny of
'post-theory'. Even the explicit instructions you left towards this (the final shots of Le Journal d'une
femme de chambre (1964), for example, denoting the events as - literally and metaphorically - the
calm before the storm) are mostly sidelined. Such a re-reading could be said to have been possible
only in an era in which surrealism came to be seen as just another element of the film rather than the
element. The 'levelling' effect of postmodernity as routing surrealism?
Perhaps it was simply a way of'taming' your films — considering them through the lens of formal
experimentation rather than as films that, in themselves, consider us in their assault on the fastasmatic
foundation. (Of course, there is a new canon of films that are not afforded such privileges - formal
considerations of Triumph des Widens (Triumph of the Will, 1935), surely a real contender for the
European exploitation underground, remain forbidden in some parts of the Western world). Perhaps
some of the blame must be pushed in your direction too. The glossy surface of Belle de Jour, the ease
with which you transgressed societal norms against such an attractive portrait of such a disinterested
society, invites a consideration of surrealism and your methods as a stylistic trait and nothing more. I
would rather keep company wirh the audiences of your first three films than those of your late French
period ones.

CONTEMPORANEITY AND NEUTRALISATION

To return to the Palestinians and the question of perspective, allow me to revisit my claim of
contemporaneity and relevance for your work (as oppose to timelessness for Godard's) in the light of
the above so as to, in a final digression, articulate something of the use of such a method. In a previous
polemic, 17 1 invoked Walter Benjamin to provide a context for that substrata of counter-revolutionaty
work that utilised a surface radicalism - skimming off the outward appearance of the avant-garde for
a variety of reasons (a process which would, followed to its logical conclusion, result in something

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