A new documentary titled Kinaesthesia delves into the profound influence of dreams on early cinema, examining how pioneering film-makers used techniques to mimic the subconscious mind. Directed by Gerald Fox and based on an essay by the late Harvard professor Vlada Petrić, the film presents a scholarly yet fascinating exploration of surrealist and experimental works from the 1910s and 1920s.
The documentary features iconic films such as Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou, co-written with Salvador Dalí, which retains its shocking power nearly a century later with images like a razor slicing through an eyeball. It also highlights DW Griffith's The Avenging Conscience, where double exposure creates ghostly visions, and Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush, in which hunger-induced delirium transforms Chaplin into a chicken.
Kinaesthesia serves as a greatest-hits compilation of early experimental cinema, including works by German expressionists FW Murnau and Fritz Lang, Soviet directors Sergei Eisenstein and Oleksandr Dovzhenko, and the Japanese film-maker Teinosuke Kinugasa, whose 1926 film A Page of Madness—set in a psychiatric hospital—was long believed lost before being discovered in a sake barrel. The documentary also pays tribute to avant-garde film-maker Maya Deren, addressing the male-heavy canon of early cinema.
While Fox's narration is described as somewhat hammy and dramatic segments featuring actor Goran Kostic add little, the film's expert editing conveys the shock and novelty early audiences must have felt. Despite its lecture-like tone, Kinaesthesia is deemed required viewing for cinema history enthusiasts.
