London's Tate Modern explores Salvador Dali's relationship with the silver screen

Film critic Christopher Bray comments on The Tate Modern's exhibition entitled 'Dali and Film', which explores the relationship between motion pictures and the work of the Andalusian surrealist. "Some of the most potent of Dalínian (the term is the great egotist's own) reveries are to be found in the cinema. Still images, even still images as drenched in psychic discharge as those by the young Dalí, can only ever be snapshots of a dream. For a conscious journey down Sigmund Freud's 'royal road to the unconscious' you need moving pictures. ... No other art form has ever been able to give such concrete expression to the abstract conjunctions of our sleeping lives. ... 'The best cinema,' he [Dali] once declaimed, 'is the kind that can be perceived with your eyes closed.' As anyone unfortunate enough to catch sight of Dalí's fawning Portrait of Laurence Olivier in the Role of Richard III (1955) at Tate Modern will attest, the same goes for the worst paintings."

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