Gold's film is a model of its kind - indeed it's impossible to see how such a thoroughly researched and meticulously presented documentary study of an art movement would get made today. God bless the old Arts Council of Great Britain.
Anyone with an interest in 20th Century art should get hold of a copy. The film's very varied riches include gems such as a most entertaining interview with the mischievous Marcel Duchamp, the contemporary sounds of Dada poetry being read (if that is the word) and actors solemnly intoning the thoughts of Surrealist activists, half playful and half deadly serious. The film sees Dada and Surrealism as an intellectual current, often inextricably bound up with radical politics, something easily forgotten in an age where art can be a branch of celebrity culture. Above all it gives context, intellectual, social, economic and political. Dada and Surrealist objects were not just brilliant visual witticisms (a pair of women's shoes with flesh and blood toes etc etc), they were - and are - much more dangerous than that.
Anyone with an interest in 20th Century art should get hold of a copy. The film's very varied riches include gems such as a most entertaining interview with the mischievous Marcel Duchamp, the contemporary sounds of Dada poetry being read (if that is the word) and actors solemnly intoning the thoughts of Surrealist activists, half playful and half deadly serious. The film sees Dada and Surrealism as an intellectual current, often inextricably bound up with radical politics, something easily forgotten in an age where art can be a branch of celebrity culture. Above all it gives context, intellectual, social, economic and political. Dada and Surrealist objects were not just brilliant visual witticisms (a pair of women's shoes with flesh and blood toes etc etc), they were - and are - much more dangerous than that.