Though Polanski has often remarked upon the crucial importance of surrealism to his conception of the cinema, the extent of his commitment to surrealist philosophy in his feature films has never been satisfactorily examined. Indeed reviewers have tended to doubt Polanski's word and have regarded the observable surrealist elements in his major films as icing on the cake rather than as central to their conception (p. 44)
An examination of Cul-de-Sac, however, reveals a total commitment to the philosophy as well as the techniques of surrealism. The film's attacks on social conventions and institutions, and on logical thought processes; its veneration of the fool, the criminal, the primitive, and the insane as types who have escaped the deadening hand of social conformity; its anarchic humour and pervading ambiguity of tone; its devaluation of language as a means of communication; its stripping away of man's social persona to reveal the suffering being within; and finally its resolution of contradictions to attain what Breton called 'a kind of absolute reality'—all of these elements combine to make Cul-de-Sac a work whose whole raison d'être is inseparable from surrealist philosophy. The opening sequences of Cul-de-Sac serve as a brilliant exposition of the main elements of the plot, and are dominated by a landscape, which with its suggestion of freedom (open spaces) and sterility will be seen to have a thematic importance. (pp. 44-6)
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