Surreal Cinema - Film Series and Discussion with Jared Wagner

Alice (1988) - Screening and Discussion 3/27/25 at 7 PM

Only when Touch is freed from its utilitarian context, not constantly forced into a self-conscious moment, will it reach the point where it transmutes the barrier of its identifying existence, and without being aware of it, becomes the language of the poet.

Our touch, dulled by manual work, had to be dragged away from utilitarianism and returned to imaginative childhood experiences, to the discoveries of the original world. It is important to bear in mind that if, in today’s world, ‘art’ has any purpose it is to liberate us. Liberate us from the principle of reality, from that pragmatic rope which has regimented us from birth and return us to the principle of pleasure.

- Jan Švankmajer

Taking into account the medium’s audio-visual nature, it may seem strange for a filmmaker to find an interest in the physical sense of Touch. For the Prague Surrealist Jan Švankmajer, however, I wish to posit that a fuller understanding of cinema’s horizons (and its contents) are uncovered when interacting with his dreamlike and sensuous worlds. Having joined with the official Surrealist group in 1970 with his wife and creative partner, Eva Švankmajerova, Jan has been working in the arts for over half a century–creating short and feature length films associated with Marquis de Sade, Edgar Allen Poe, Sigmund Freud, and even (loosely) adapting Goethe’s Faust– filmed almost entirely with marionette puppets. Even though his work spanned many decades and combinations of different mediums–including live-action, animation, stop-motion animation, collage, etc–from Švankmajer’s earliest experimental short films in the mid 1960’s to his latest feature, Insect, in 2019, an acutely singular viewpoint of reality is represented. Not that all of his films are the same, mind you, but instead a clear vision, a precise viewpoint, or posture, is revealed. Considering his interest in European philosophy and psychoanalysis then, this clarity of view appears to arise as a result of his ideas being developed in the theoretical space before entering into their cinematic equivalent.

In view of their often controversial nature, it is perhaps unsurprising to note that most of these influences also tend to be key points of interest for many other surrealists. However, the artist relevant for our purposes is the, a bit less antagonistic but equally as strange, work of Lewis Carroll. Having previously adapted Jabberwocky in 1971 into an experimental short, it is perhaps not unsurprising to see Alice in Wonderland pique Švankmajer’s interest when deciding upon the story for his first feature film in the mid 1980s. As with many interested in psychoanalysis, childhood was a particularly important theme for Švankmajer’s work. Be it Freud, Jung, Lacan (or any of their more modern analogues), early childhood experiences are argued to shape the human person in vast and mysterious ways. For Švankmajer then, many of his films relate to this theme on the importance of childhood–often including explicit references to his own memories, dreams, and fears. However, before we dive too deep into his film Alice (Neco z Alenky– literally translated as ‘Something from Alice’, 1988 ) , it can be helpful to look at some of the theoretical context which set the stage for his work through a peek back to the Parisian Surrealists and their relationship to the Prague Surrealists that he ended up joining.

Though there are certainly many differences between the two surrealist groups (and in certain cases a bit of infighting occurred), the Parisian and the Prague Surrealists were surprisingly amiable. Both sides befriending and visiting the other on multiple occasions (particularly in 1934-1935), their mutual affinity for each other coupled with the geographic distance allowed for respectful common ground to be praised and highlighted. To compare the two without seeking to be too reductive, the surrealists from Paris, generally speaking, tended to be a bit more rigid, anarchic, and antagonistic (at times even violent); and while the Prague Surrealists were iconoclastic and experimental, they were focused on other aspects of expression–particularly in relation to how they approached the subject of texture. Bunuel sliced open the conscious eye, violently arguing for the need to rely upon the logic of the dream, whereas Švankmajer presents the world through reorganized senses and invokes us to ‘close’ our own eyes so that we may use our ‘Haptic eye’ to feel his films.

This is, at the end of the day, inherent to Švankmajer’s work: his desire to communicate. A major function of his tactile films is to force us to experience our bodies differently–leading our sense memory to take the reins. To sit down in front of his work then, is to see, or rather to feel, his reaching out to us. Almost like a preacher evangelizing, Švankmajer calls on us to look, to touch, to feel and to then think of what our senses communicate to us. We already learn with our other senses, why not this one? In the end, as the ardent surrealist, he begs us to subversion, to explore new ways of experiencing reality.

He did not always see the physical sense of Touch in such a profound way, but due to heavy censorship through the mid 1970’s, he was forced to stop making films for close to ten years by the Soviet occupied, Czechoslovokian government. Ever the alchemist, instead of withdrawing from art in frustration or despair, he transformed. Along with his fellow surrealist group members, he began crafting tactile objects and creating similarly tactile experiments and games, attempting to understand the connection between our subconscious and our physical experience of this world.

When he came back to making films, his focus shifted a tad: a bit more precise and pointed; a bit more aware of the function of certain images and settings. Much like many Surrealists, Švankmajer’s interest in the unconscious and dark, fettered corners in the human mind brought him to the works of authors like Lewis Carroll and his book Alice in Wonderland .

Those familiar with the Disney versions of the story will perhaps be a bit surprised by Švankmajer’s adaptation. Though most of the well-known characters are present–the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, the Caterpillar, the King and the Queen etc.–Švankmajer is much less interested in the overall narrative of what happens ‘in Wonderland’ and more concerned with Alice’s experiences that make up the whole of the narrative– what does her experience feel like to her in her subconscious ?

The distinction between the use of narrative as primary source of meaning and a use of narrative, as one would a tool, within the form, is important. To put it another way, when Švankmajer does this, he upends the traditional hierarchy in film which prioritizes narrative as a means of engaging with a film as art . No longer are we interested necessarily in identifying psychologically with the character of Alice as she weaves and stumbles through this fantastical ‘dream’. Instead, we are asked to look at the world through inverted eyes, with our haptic organs, and experience our senses in their fullness–or at least more full-ness.

Essentially, Švankmajer is contending that our senses have been relegated, imprisoned to an enforced limit of contexts. Particularly for the physical sense of Touch, we are not taught to pay much attention to or notice textures with any sense of significance, at least in our Western cultures. It has been inappropriately categorized as functionally meaningless (or worse, sinful) based on hierarchies that are often left undefended. Challenging these arbitrary hierarchies, Švankmajer proclaims:

Our touch, dulled by manual work, had to be dragged away from utilitarianism and returned to imaginative childhood experiences, to the discoveries of the original world. It is important to bear in mind that if, in today’s world, ‘art’ has any purpose it is to liberate us. Liberate us from the principle of reality, from that pragmatic rope which has regimented us from birth and return us to the principle of pleasure.

Coupled with his anti-utilitarianism, his liberative understanding of art finds its grounding in parsing out mysterious, subconscious associations with which our experiences are comprised of. Finding out how to tease these associations out of the viewer, however, would be a little more complicated and his answer finds its origins in a perhaps unlikely source: Edgar Allen Poe. Švankmajer writes, “[But it was in] Poe’s work I discovered what an enormous role touch played in his psychological studies of pathological behavior.” He continues, “For readers these sensations are second hand, not directly experienced with their own bodies, but the tactile imagination is capable of re-creating them quite intensely.”

While the scope of this post prevents an exhaustive analysis of this idea, Švankmajer’s work can be generally seen as largely predicated upon this dual move. This move occurs as a result of the artist creating a tactile image that the viewer sees, the brain of the viewer then synesthetically engages with the viewer’s sense memory to give an analogous ‘experience’ of that image. Or as Philosopher Laura U. Marks succinctly puts it, “...the eyes themselves function like organs of touch.”

As a result, the prioritizing of these objects, people, and settings in relation to their physical, material qualities, reveals itself as a method of communicating in a ‘language’ of physical touch. This translation is built into a language few are fluent in, but by utilizing subconscious symbols and feelings which find themselves contradicting the rules of Reality, this language rebelliously uncovers itself as the one born from the Surreal. Using this ‘new’ language, Švankmajer takes advantage of a world unaware and constantly creates space that challenges bourgeois comfort and standards.

One such reason for this uncomfortable, eerie quality is Švankmajer’s belief that “Tactile sensations are associated with visual ones that manifest themselves strongly…in the erotic field.” To put it another way, we are only ‘allowed’ to thoughtfully engage with the physical sense in the marrying of the sensual and the sexual. By equating these two distinct forms, we do violence to both forms and ourselves as the conduit for these experiences. When the viewer experiences such textural stimulation, without literal sexual/erotic symbols, images that portray the sensual then function inside an intimacy that is unnerving, bordering on the perverse. It is an examination of the body that we are simply not comfortable with.

We see this come to play in a couple different ways in Švankmajer’s film: through both sound design and image. Though every frame is imbued with textured images, when we see the light reflecting on Alice’s mouth and lips when she often narrates our film; or the Alice doll’s face dripping and shimmering after being submerged underneath the water; or the posh Frog’s large, moist tongue as it splats and grabs the flies; or the creaking of the Mad Hatter doll as he winds the March Hare’s wind up key; it feels like we are shown ‘too much’.

In addition to the attention to visual texture, these images are coupled with a particularly affective sound design. Though the only dialogue is spoken by our narrator (and ostensibly our protagonist, Alice), the film is made up of an inexplicably sparse selection of sounds, mostly related to literal, physical movement and action–characters breathing and walking, the clinking of materials like tin and glass, creaking wood, the opening of drawers, ticking of clocks, etc. This sparseness, this selective choice, is another reminder that we are not presented with a world that is grounded upon Realism–even despite our ability to interpret what these sounds are correlated with within reality. This is not a world with ambiance. It is the enclosed world of Alice’s subconscious and it plays by its own rules. These sounds–the dripping and plopping of water, the splat of the frog’s tongue on glass plates, or the friction of a can opener on a sardine tin–all serve to create a hyper specific soundscape with which we are dropped into where we cannot help but experience what happens when two objects connect or interact with other materials. The major point here is to force us to see, hear, and feel what is happening. We can synesthetically feel these sounds in our hands and all around our bodies, creating discomfort and unease. These textures are moist and rough, full of age and mold and deterioration… For Švankmajer, this is what the imaginative subconscious of childhood feels like: the literal textures that make up one’s world.

The ultimate goal for this screening (and series as a whole), is to begin a conversation about and present a general analysis of different surrealistic groups from various cultures around the world; to explore their differences and similarities and see them as part of the same rebellion against certain ideologically oppressive forces. Ideally we will be able to travel from Europe to South America, to various regions in Asia, to Africa, and to America throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Though the levels of formality and particular aesthetics may differ, artistic engagement with what we call the unconscious is universal and pervasive. To explore the raw, unfettered aspects of our minds in a ‘safe’, aesthetic space is certainly something that we can learn from. Surrealists are a group inherently politically charged, and angry at powerful systems that abuse, censor, and dominate their citizens, enacting oppressive and binding views of reality. The idea of freedom then arrives as a central question and motivation for the surrealists. The move is a direct attempt to steal back sensory autonomy from an oppressive, external source and give up control to those mysterious forces that lie solely within us: that which is unseen, only subjectively felt and experienced. For Švankmajer in particular, this becomes part of the process of liberating ourselves from the ‘principle of reality’ so we may be returned to the ‘principle of pleasure’. Here, he is not necessarily advocating Hedonism, as it were; but is instead attempting to return his audience to a more holistic experience of the senses, and consequently, to their imaginative returns.

post by Jared Wagner