Antonin Artaud "La Nouvelle Revue Française"; they were rejected, but the editor, Jacques Rivière, wrote back seeking to understand him, and a relationship via letters developed. Their compilation into an epistolary work, "Correspondance avec Jacques Rivière", was Artaud's first major publication. Artaud cultivated a great interest in cinema as well, writing the scenario for the first surrealist film, "The Seashell and the Clergyman" (1928), directed by Germaine Dulac. This film influenced Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, two key Spanish surrealists, when they made "Un Chien Andalou" (1929). Artaud's performance as Jean-Paul Marat in Abel Gance's "Napoleon" (1927) used exaggerated movements to convey
Film (film) This inevitably evokes the notorious opening sequence of "Un Chien Andalou" in which a human eye is sliced open with a razor blade. In fact, "The Eye" was an early title for "Film", though admittedly, at that time, he had not thought of the need for the opening close-up. As a student of French literature, Beckett would have been familiar with Victor Hugo’s poem "La Conscience". ‘"Conscience"’ in French can mean either ‘conscience’ in the English sense or ‘consciousness’ and the double meaning is important. Hugo's poem concerns a man haunted by an eye that stares at him unceasingly from