Dada, Surrealism, and the Cinematic Effect

DADA, SURREALISM, AND THE CINEMATIC EFFECT By R. Bruce Elder Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013, 765 pp.Reviewed by John W. LockeIf you have an interest in any of the following six areas, you should read this book: DADA, Dada films, Surrealism, Surrealist films, Lawrence (Larry) Jordan, or logic and mathematics in relation to developments in early twentieth century art. Many books unfold in expected ways. They often contain scholarship, critical insight, and ideas that advance our understanding of their subjects. A very small number of books also propose positions which truly surprise the reader. Elder's book is an example of the latter type. Why would any Film Studies book contain sections dealing with geometry, logic, and formalist mathematics? How can these discussions illuminate DADA, Surrealism, and the work of Lawrence Jordan? This 700 plus page book answers those questions.A Film Studies reader may be drawn to the book by its title while working on Marcel Duchamp and Anemic cinema (1926). Using the very comprehensive index, a ten-page discussion of the film can be easily found. Beginning to read this, it becomes clear that the treatment of Anemic cinema is located in the chapter "Dadaism and the Disasters of War," which started some sixty pages earlier. This example illustrates one of the valuable aspects of Elder's book: it is about films and filmmakers, but it is also about the intellectual and art world context in which the films were made in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1960s. Just reading the sections about the films would miss the more extensive positions and arguments presented by the book.Dada, Surrealism, and the Cinematic Effect is carefully constructed to be read from the first page rather than being used as a reference book. There is an introduction in which Elder states his position with such admirable clarity that it would be presumptuous for me to paraphrase it: "In my consideration of the relations between film and the artistic movements known as DADA and Surrealism, I take two approaches. The first is to explore the cinema's role as a model for those movements and to demonstrate that the film medium has had a privileged status for Dadaists and Surrealists, who wanted to reformulate poetry, theatre, music, and painting so that these forms might take on some of the cinema's virtues. The second is to study how the advanced ideas about art and artmaking proposed by the DADA and Surrealist circles, and the advanced artistic practices to which these ideas gave rise, reciprocally influenced the cinema."There are numerous examples of new ideas in the book. For example, some conventional approaches to DADA see the movement as resulting from the First World War being a protest movement centered on nihilism. Elder points out a spiritual side of the movement and emphasizes its constructive aims. He also discusses the close relationship between DADA and Surrealism, particularly in regard to spiritual and occult interests. For me, and I think for most Film Studies readers, this is a fresh perspective. Also new for me is the book's deviation from the prevalent view that early cinema was judged to be vulgar and "low" rather than art because of its popular origin. Elder explains at length how and why cinema was considered to be the "optimal or top art" by Dadaist and Surrealist artists.Perhaps the most surprising component is the opening chapter: "The Fate of Reason in Modernity." It is possible to be well versed in cinema and the arts and to believe that all is well in areas such as mathematics and science. Surely those are stable areas, making steady progress without turmoil. Elder points out ways in which the foundations of geometry, logic, and mathematics were questioned in the early part of the twentieth century. He writes about these developments in a way that permits Film Studies readers to approach understanding these positions without having a significant background. …