Our Take

The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928) - Germaine Dulac dives headfirst into the erotic, fractured fever dream of Antonin Artaud. This is the true birth of Surrealism on screen—a swirling, hallucinatory mess of repressed desire and shattered glass. It’s a film that smells of incense and sexual frustration, moving with the logic of a drowning man’s final thoughts. Forget the orderly storytelling of the era; this is a rhythmic, visual poem about the internal collapse of the soul. It’s weird, it’s uncomfortable, and it’s a beautiful, jagged artifact of the cinematic avant-garde.