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
Art film make "art films", and film critics did not use the term "art film". However, there were films that had sophisticated aesthetic objectives, such as Carl Theodor Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (1928) and "Vampyr" (1932), surrealist films such as Luis Buñuel's "Un chien andalou" (1929) and "L'Âge d'Or" (1930), or even films dealing with political and current-event relevance such as Sergei Eisenstein's famed and influential masterpiece "Battleship Potemkin". The U.S. film "" (1927) by German Expressionist director F. W. Murnau uses distorted art design and groundbreaking cinematography to create an exaggerated, fairy-tale-like world rich with symbolism and imagery.