L’AVENTURE PRODIGIEUSE DE LA DENTELLIÈRE ET DU RHINOCÉROS
“The Prodigious Adventure Of The Lacemaker And The Rhinoceros”
Production: Spain/France, 1954-62
Director: Salvador Dalí & Robert Descharnes
Category: Surrealism
One of the legendary uncompleted art films of the 20th century, this collaboration with Robert Descharnes was conceived as a cinematic exploration of Dali’s previous revelations concerning Vermeer’s masterpiece The Lacemaker and its occult “rhinocerontic” morphology. The film encompasses Dalí’s visits to the Louvre, the creation of his painting Paranoiac-Critical Study Of Vermeer’s “Lacemaker” (including sessions in the rhino pen at Vincennes zoo), and various scenes of Dalí and Gala at home in the Cap de Creus. With logorhythmic forms as its central subject, L’Aventure Prodigieuse is also a vast visual diary of disparate threads and situations. Shooting went on sporadically until 1962, but although apparently all the scheduled scenes were shot, a finished film has yet to be edited from this rarely-glimpsed footage.
Posted by Captain Nightshade