The first a few decades of the 1900's were an extraordinary era for artists; now-renowned pioneers of a variety of fields interacted with one another across the world. In a letter sent from the Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí to André Breton (the founder of Surrealism) in 1937, Dalí enthusiastically described his meetings with various "American Surrealists." The list included directors like Cecil Demille of
The Ten Commandments, comedians such as Marx Brothers, and lastly Walt Disney.
Perhaps it might be odd for a man associated with cartoons to be coupled with Surrealism, which is often regarded as the strange alienation from the reality; however, we can also think of Surrealism as the journey inwards to uncover the truth beneath the dreams. Thus perhaps animation is the perfect genre for that artistic movement. In addition, the artworks of early animators tended to be against the existing art, similar to Dadasim that broke the established elite-centred art. It is the same with Surrealism in a way that the artists reformed art into the one centred around the masses.
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| Dalí and Disney |
Animation strived to emphasize the distinguishing characteristics of what the artists wanted to describe. Thus it is not surprising that the Surrealists, the people who are trying to find the true nature and charactertistics of art from nature, were fond of animation. The often-mentioned founders of Surrealism in America include the legends of animation such as Max Fleischer (Betty Boop, Popeye) and Tex Avery (Bugs Bunny), and of course including Walt Disney.
Of all the American Surrealists he met, Dalí particularly liked Walt Disney who also got along well with the immensily creative Dalí. They met again in Jack Warner's party in 1945, where Disney showed Dalí his project named
Destino. Interestingly it was about this time that Dalí was banished from the Surrealism group due to arguments with André Breton, but I digress. Dalí was enthralled by
Destino, and soon they started collaborating in Disney Studio, working 8 to 5 every day to make 20 seconds of films. The central theme was Chronos (the Greek god of time) destined to love a mortal woman, yet the way each artist described the film's plot is very intriguing:
Dalí said it is "A magical display of the problem of life in the labyrinth of time." Walt Disney called it "A simple story about a young girl in search of true
love."
This short film was Dalí's ambitious vision of the very first psychological optimistic renewal delivered to the world devastated by the two wars. In fact artworks produced after the war displayed terrifying and abrupt visuals corresponding to the tragedy of war. The artists at that time had rough, distorted, and amorphous tone in their brushstrokes, while attempting to save the essense of what they are capturing at the same.
Although bearing a Surrealism imagery for most of the time, the film
Destino tends to be similar to those postwar paintings with the existence of disturbing movements of the figures, uncomfortable camera work, and the characteristic Freudian imagery. But what makes this film unique is that not only they expressed the agony from war in a violent fashion, but also they showed these by coupling them with the theme of love. It is a meaningful achievement, considering that the art in those times were filled with negativity, deeply immersed in the artists' own world.
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| Still shots of Destino compared to Dalí's works. © 2003 Disney. Yet the picture on the top right is by another Surrealist artist René Magritte, just to show similarities to other Surrealist's works. |
Unfortunately the film couldn't be completed and thus did not have the chance to be judged. Since the World War II Disney Studio was suffering from enormous financial crisis. Until their hit
Cinderella saved them, the studio continurously had to reduce the size of the studio, and the increasing production costs of this project led to its indefinite halt in 1948.
The complete version we see now is what Walt Disney's nephew, Roy Disney and 25 animators recreated in 2003 based on storyboards by Dalí and consultation with the film's former animation director John Hench almost five decades later.
Although much time has passed, Dalí's sensitivity and sparkling ideas are alive in this work. Without any particular dialogue, the film continues with endless connections between images that seem to be the mixture of the imagery from Sleeping Beauty and Dalí's famous previous works. The disharmony between Dalí's charactertistic sexual images and Disney's beauty and goodness is very interesting. The animation is gorgeous and enchanting while it is grotesque and painful at the same time; nevertheless, this film truly lives up to the Surrealist master who couldn't be free from fantasy and passion even during daylight.
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| My Favourite moment of the film. © 2003 Disney. |
