Surrealist Film's Real Aim Wasn't Shock, It Was Freedom

Surrealist cinema set out to loosen film's grip on tidy plot and literary logic, trading strict narrative for imagery that reads as unreasonable on its face. The point wasn't spectacle for its own sake but access — a way into the fears and desires that conventional storytelling tends to smooth over. That reliance on the seemingly absurd was deliberate, a method rather than a lapse.

With reporting from The Collector.