Luis Bunuel: The Process of Dissociation in Three Films

Abstract

The process of dissociation (or principle of displacement) is perhaps the most important formal innovation to emerge from the surrealist movement. Andre Breton, in the first Surrealist Manifesto, gave it its most concise and powerful formulation, although the idea had already been widely used by Jarry, Lautreamont, Poe, Rimbaud, and Mallarme. According to Breton, the process of dissociation involves the fortuitous of two disparate realities, creating an element of shock or surprise. In order for this random assemblage not to remain just an assemblage, the juxtaposition must produce a transformation in the relationship between the elements within the image and between the beholder and the object. It is this transformation, or displacement, which produces the effect of shock or surprise. Describing the proper function of the process of dissociation in art and literature is difficult at best, but to speak of surrealist cinema seems to be almost a contradiction in terms. Indeed, for the surrealists, the search for new cinematic forms was the antithesis of what cinema should be. It was difficult to