The Death of Salvador Dali

"There is only one difference between a madman and me - The madman thinks he is sane - I know I am mad."

-Salvador Dali

This award-winning short film written and directed by Delaney Bishop made something fantastical out of an actual historical situation. For those who aren't art aficionados, I'll point out that Salvador Dali was the Spanish painter most famous for The Persistence of Memory (the painting itself is spec fictional, you can view it here. I was fortunate to see it in person at the MoMA in NYC). The surrealism that struck the art world has influenced pop and mainstream culture from Looney Tunes to Carl Sagan. Bishop uses Dali's surrealism to create a fantasy film based on Salvador Dali's relationship with Sigmund Freud.

Dali's surrealism was greatly influenced by Sigmund Freud's theory of the unconscious as described in The Interpretation of Dreams (read more). The 1939 meeting of Dali and Freud was the subject of Hysteria, a play by Terry Johnson, and was revisited by Bishop in the short film, The Death of Salvador Dali. In the film Dali has come to ask Freud for help with a very serious problem: Dali needs Freud to give him back his insanity, so he can paint as he once did when he was mad. The practical Freud refuses, but Dali woos him into a single session, and from that point the line between reality and dream becomes so blurred it ceases to exist.

The Death of Salvador Dali is fun short film worthy of its surrealist protagonist, Dali, and Freud's legacy to the interpretation of dreams.