The Seashell and the Clergyman

The Seashell and the Clergyman (French: La Coquille et le clergyman) is an experimental French film directed by Germaine Dulac, from an original scenario by Antonin Artaud. It premiered in Paris on 9 February 1928.

The film follows the erotic hallucinations of a priest lusting after the wife of a general.

Although accounts differ, it seems that Artaud disapproved of Dulac's treatment of his scenario. The film was overshadowed by Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog, 1929), written and directed by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. Un chien andalou is considered the first surrealist film, but its foundations in The Seashell and the Clergyman have been all but overlooked. However, the iconic techniques associated with surrealist cinema are all borrowed from this early film. In Lee Jamieson's own analysis of the film, the surrealist treatment of the image is clear. He writes:

"The Seashell and the Clergyman penetrates the skin of material reality and plunges the viewer into an unstable landscape where the image cannot be trusted. Remarkably, Artaud not only subverts the physical, surface image, but also its interconnection with other images. The result is a complex, multi-layered film, so semiotically unstable that images dissolve into one another both visually and 'semantically', truly investing in film's ability to act upon the subconscious."

The British Board of Film Censors famously reported that the film was "so cryptic as to be almost meaningless. If there is a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable".

Alan Williams has suggested the film is better thought of as a work of or influenced by German expressionism.

The BFI included The Seashell and the Clergyman on a list of 10 Great Feminist Films, stating:

Germaine Dulac was involved in the avant garde in Paris in the 1920s. Both The Smiling Madame Beudet (1922) and The Seashell and the Clergyman are important early examples of radical experimental feminist filmmaking, and provide an antidote to the art made by the surrealist brotherhood. The latter film, an interpretation of Anton Artaud’s book of the same name, is a visually imaginative critique of patriarchy – state and church – and of male sexuality. On its premiere, the surrealists greeted it with noisy derision, calling Dulac “une vache”.

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