The Seashell and the Clergyman

Germaine Dulac, 1928, scenario by Antonin Artaud. A clergyman (Alex Allin) is consumed by the wife of a general; doors, a seashell, a key, a city that will not stay still. Artaud disowned the result; at the premiere his friends shouted Dulac down. The British Board of Film Censors, 13 November 1929, rejected it as so cryptic as to be almost meaningless, adding that if there is a meaning it is doubtless objectionable. About forty minutes. CNC restorations keep the film the surrealists tried to talk over.