Nonlinear narrative a linear storyline, while nonlinear films often contain linear sequences. Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" (1941)—influenced structurally by "The Power and the Glory" (1933)—and Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon" (1950) use a non-chronological flashback narrative that is often labeled nonlinear. Experimentation with nonlinear structure in film dates back to the silent film era, including D. W. Griffith's "Intolerance" (1916) and Abel Gance's "Napoléon" (1927). Nonlinear film emerged from the French avant-garde[5] in 1924 with René Clair’s "Entr'acte", Dadaïst film and then in 1929 with Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's "Un Chien Andalou" (English: "An Andalusian Dog"). The surrealist film jumps into fantasy and
Un Chien Andalou when the policeman places the hand in the box previously carried by the young man and gives it to the young woman. The androgynous young woman contemplates something happily while standing in the middle of the now busy street clutching the box. She is then run over by a car and a few bystanders gather around her. The young man and the young woman watch these events unfold from the apartment window. The young man seems to take sadistic pleasure in the androgynous young woman's danger and subsequent death, and as he gestures at the shocked young woman in the