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
Film editing such as Lev Kuleshov (already mentioned) further explored and theorized about editing and its ideological nature. Sergei Eisenstein developed a system of editing that was unconcerned with the rules of the continuity system of classical Hollywood that he called Intellectual montage. Alternatives to traditional editing were also explored by early surrealist and Dada filmmakers such as Luis Buñuel (director of the 1929 "Un Chien Andalou") and René Clair (director of 1924's "Entr'acte" which starred famous Dada artists Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray). The French New Wave filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut and their American counterparts such as