Volume 5, Number 6 · October 28, 1965
Beyond the Fringe
By John Weightman
The History of Surrealism
by Maurice Nadeau, translated by Richard Howard, with an Introduction by Roger Shattuck
Macmillan, 351 pp., $6.95
Selected Works
by Alfred Jarry, edited by Roger Shattuck, by Simon Watson Taylor
Grove, 280 pp., $7.95
As a movement, Surrealism had fallen apart well before 1939, yet even today it is remarkable how many of its features survive, sporadically, in the life around us, particularly in advertising and show-business. While I was reading this English translation of Nadeau's book, I went to see the new Beatles film. Help!, a very unsatisfactory concoction, I thought, but interesting in that it was obviously made by people who have assimilated something of the Surrealist principles that Nadeau describes. The film is conceived as a dream in which no explanations are given. The location changes irrationally. The story, such as it is, is based on the magic significance of a ring, i.e., it combines a pun—ring/Ringo—with the mystic quest theme; a gas-pipe comes through the navel of an Elizabethan portrait, as it might in a canvas by Dali; the heroes are pursued simultaneously by Oriental priests (the Occult) and scatty scientists (cf. Jarry's Dr. Faustroll); one Beatle shrinks like Alice in Wonderland, a great favorite of the Surrealists; all four Beatles have the edgy, jeering attitudes and uncouth expression of minor Ubus, and form a sort of quadripartite Id.
Review, 3113 words
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