Das Sublime und das Aas: Salvador Dalís Entwürfe einer Geschichte (vom Tod) des Kinos

Abstract

Summary: Salvador Dalí’s film treatments have never been realized as films. They are therefore not only speaking about failed films, but indeed about failure itself: the frustration of a certain regard that symbolizes more than a look on impossible desires of a physical encounter with the visual experience. Based on this idea, the image of cinema reveals at once a formal autonomy and a sublime character. Its oscillation between mortification and (re)animation of the desired body also enlightens the double-sensed essence of Dalí’s film projects: highly referential towards the history of cinema, they transform cinema into a non-cinematic museum, a text. Distant traces of the muse are, however, shining through, inspiring thus the resurrection of films that are at the same time already dead and not yet born. [Keywords: Dalí, surrealism, desire, sublime, cinema, paranoia, burlesque, Hollywood, Marx Brothers, necrophilia, Chien andalou]