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
Rain (1929 film) they sought expression through a film's rhythm and movement—the characteristics which, according to these artists, made film a unique medium. They believed a film could create its own world, whether through thought–provoking Absurdism in a piece like Buñuel and Dali's "Un Chien Andalou" or purely through form, as in Dziga Vertov's "Man with a Movie Camera". "Rain" closely adheres to this prioritization of a film's formalistic qualities. The short film focuses primarily on composition and rhythm, visually following the patterns of raindrops and people as they try to negotiate with each other in their movements through the city. Ivens's efforts