Dalí (1991) User Reviews

So-so biography about the Spanish genius Salvador Dali retelling his thunderous and offbeat existence

[ma-cortes · 5/10 · 23 April 2021]

An unknown biography of famed artist : Lorenzo Quinn , focusing mainly on his relationship with lover Gala : Sarah Douglas , alongside his beloved mother : Rosa Novell, who died early and he felt really deranged and his bad relation with his father : Lukanov . As well as the time he spent in N. Y. in the Forties and his early days in Spain collaborating with director Luis Buñuel . As Dali makes two good friends at Madrid Residencia Estudiantes , Student boarding house : Federico García Lorca and Luis Buñuel .

This is an obscure Spain/Bulgaria co-production dealing with the tumultuous life of the outlandish famous painter Salvador Dali. Here there are several flashbacks dealing with the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), death of his best friend Federico García Lorca , and surrealist recreation of battles and war disasters . And focusing mainly the premiere of "L'Age D'or", after the film opened in París at Studio 28 on October , 1930 , dispute spread about the movie's bizarre content , on the evening of 3 December halfway through the picture , the Fascist League of Patriot and other groups began to throw purple on the screen , they then rushed out into the lobby of the theater , slashing paintings of Yves Tanguy , Dali, Joan Miro and Man Ray . That's why the producers soon withdrew the film from circulation and pulled out the movie from distribution for nearly 50 years and being threatened excommunication by the Pope . And the angry discussion between Buñuel and Dali , as they had effectively fallen out by the time went into production to the extent that Dali refused to have nothing to do with the actual filmmaking , though they had previously made Un Perro Andaluz or Un Chien Andalou 1929 . This Dali 1991 provides a disjointed realization and there is also some reenacting of surrealist set pieces in Salvador Dali style . Lorenzo Quinn gives an overacting with lots of gesticulation and excesses , while Sarah Douglas as Gala is more adequate than him . In the film appears several famous artists and historical characters as Edward IV and Mrs Simpson, Jean Cocteau , Igor Stravinsky , Rene Clair , Eugenio D'Ors , Henry Miller, Picasso , Andre Breton who expels Dali from the Surrealist Movement , among others.

The picture was regularly written/produced/directed by Antoni Ribas . Antonio was a Spanish writer/ filmmaker known for directing some films about Catalunya history, such as : Victoria ! La Gran Aventura De Un Pueblo , Victoria 2 La Disbaixa , Victoria 3 El Seny and Rauxa, Catalans Universal, Tierra De Cañones and his best movie : La Ciuda Cremada (1976) . Rating : average but passable and acceptable , only for self-biographic enthusiasts .

A surrealistic movie about a surrealistic artist

[Got The T-Shirt · 4/10 · 28 March 2006]

The Spanish library in our city has a large collection of Spanish movies and to extend our knowledge of the language, we rent random movies. This way we stumbled on Dali.

The opening scene didn't promise too much I must say. Probably due to bad preparation from our side, we were thrown in this surrealistic scene head first. Depicting one of Dali's surrealistic dreams, this scene made me feel like we attended a highly subsidized, but rarely visited art theater performance. In the next scenes the audience is introduced to the title character. The Dali in this movie gets on your nerves really fast with his typical way of speaking and his fanatic drive to annoy other people. Slowly the movie regained terrain however. When the interview -the main window of the movie- starts, we see Dali reflecting on his own life in what seems like his true self. The times he lived in were wild and that makes the context of his stories very interesting.

What did I consider the good aspects of the movie? It's an interesting way to find out more about the artist Dali. Because Dali lived in an age where film and photography already existed, the movie stays really close to the truth. If Dali had lived 100 years earlier, people would probably never picture him like he really was. They probably would've pictured him like a quiet man with a vivid fantasy. If I didn't know otherwise, I would have said Quin overacted. Apparently he did a very thorough job. We also get to know a little about the Spanish civil war, a part of history usually overlooked in the turmoil of the two world wars and the hectic period in between.

Alas, for me, the bad aspects of the movie came out on top. The aforementioned way of acting may refrain Dali from becoming a total caricature, it fails with all the other characters. Beside that, the filming techniques that were used, especially the dubbing of the voices, make the movie appear cheap and very out-of-date. It also distracts too much from the content. I was surprised the movie was made in the nineties for that matters.

If you consider watching the movie however, don't hesitate to do so. It's enough as an accurate biopic and if you prepare for some surrealistic scenes and a caricature set of characters, you may just come out okay.

A very rare bird, indeed.

[Bobs-9 · 22 May 2001]

This is a rather obscure film in the USA, and the only way I was able to see it was via a Japanese laserdisc. When buying this rare disc, I discovered that there was almost no information in English, and very little in other languages, on the 'net about this film, this site included, so I thought I'd post some.

Not to be confused with a 1986 documentary film of the same name directed by Adam Low, this is a biographical film on the Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali. Young Dali, already famous in Europe, arrives in New York in the 1940s because that's where the money is, and the war isn't. He and his companion Gala begin meeting with an American reporter for interviews, and in the process tell the story of Dali's life and early career. The ensuing flashbacks portray some famous artists that he met, worked with, and had conflicts with, for example Pablo Picasso, Garcia-Lorca, Luis Bunuel, or Jean Cocteau. The premier of Dali and Bunuel's groundbreaking 1929 surrealist film `Un chien andalou' is briefly depicted, showing snippets of the actual film and the audience's mixture of amazement and disgust at it. There is some recreation of surreal imagery from Dali's work, in the form of dream sequences or the distorted imaginings of Dali's fertile mind. The famous image of the `limp watches' from one of his best-known paintings appears as a sculpture in an imagined scene of Spanish Civil War refugees, the watches actually hanging from the trees and flapping in the wind. More sculpturally-rendered images from his paintings are in this scene as well. Other surrealist touches include some very odd costumes, and a scary, bizarre dream sequence at the start of the film. There is a fair amount of nudity in this film, none of which I would consider gratuitous, but consistent with the bohemian lifestyles and surreal visions that are its subject. All this makes `Dali' great fun to watch. It ends abruptly with Dali deciding to return to Europe.

Lorenzo Quinn (Anthony Quinn's son), gives a very likable portrayal of Dali as a young man, nicely capturing the combination of artistic vision, aggressive ambition, flamboyant charisma, and pure B.S. that Dali is known for. When meeting with strangers, reporters, or people whose chains he just wanted to yank, Dali adopted an odd, distorted way of speaking that was barely intelligible, and Quinn reproduces this very well. If I hadn't seen film of the real Dali speaking this way, I would have suspected it was a fanciful invention of the filmmakers. Quinn shows great charisma in this role, and is totally believable as young Salvador Dali.

I do find this film a bit shallow in its portrayal of some of the famous artists of Dali's time. It doesn't attempt to actually SHOW Dali and Bunuel making `Un chien andalou,' and people like Bunuel and Cocteau are not fleshed-out in any way. For example, all it tells us about Bunuel is that he liked to look at women's asses -- very enlightening. In addition, the music seems a bit chintzy, not really helping with the mood of the piece, and evoking a cheap, made-for-TV-movie impression. The very abrupt ending, with the credits and more of that chintzy music running over a freeze-frame, only adds to that impression. I think the inadequacy of the music score annoyed me the most.

Nevertheless, the surreal imagery is a lot of fun, and Quinn's charismatic portrayal of Dali, makes it well worth seeing, if you can find it.