Dalí (1991)

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 one would consider gratuitous, but consistent with the bohemian lifestyles and surreal visions that are its subject.