The Fame and Shame of Salvador Dali
1997-98 BBC/DD 120’ but shown in two one hour parts
This was the second major biographical film I made with the Irish writer Ian Gibson. Ian and I had been fellow students at Trinity College, Dublin, both reading Spanish, although we didn’t really know each other then - after all, he was one year ahead of me and a brilliant scholar, while I was a pretty hopeless one and spent most of my time at the movies! So it was only much later that we became good friends and a fruitful creative relationship developed during the making of these two revelatory feature length docs, the first, a very loving one, about Federico Garcia Lorca; the second, a very entertaining but more critical one, about Salvador Dali. In both Ian was, as always, the relentlessly investigative biographer, stopping at nothing to get at the truth. At the same time he was engaging and relaxed and, with this Dali film as with the Lorca one, didn’t want to be weighed down by a pre-written script. Of course we carefully planned things in advance, But beyond that every situation we encountered was an improvised occasion in which I could rely on Ian’s extensive knowledge and easy eloquence to keep everything going. While his genuine curiosity about the lives he was exploring, as well as his immediate interest in whoever he was talking to, made people open up in unexpected ways. This was particularly important when examining a life as fascinating and contradictory as that of Salvador Dali, whose moustache and carefully constructed persona had made him the world’s most celebrated and recognisable Surrealist. Of course his painting technique was extraordinary and his most memorable images genuinely arresting and subversive. At the same time he was a flamboyant and outrageous exhibitionist, often perversely, if humorously, untruthful, and at times politically offensive, even supporting Franco along the way. As someone says in the film ’he was both a genius and a swine!‘ His early brilliant creative life, which also included a very close friendship with Lorca and two deliberately shocking film collaborations with Luis Bunuel, was dramatically redirected, both personally and financially, by his bizarre marriage to Gala; leading to a lifestyle corrupted by money and fame. In this Dalinian filmed journey, originally transmitted in two one hour parts, we move from Dali’s very formative Catalan childhood and house in Cadaques to Madrid, Paris, London and New York; as well as to the two museums in Florida and Figueres devoted to his work. However, what gives this documentary an added edge is that it was made during the actual writing of Ian Gibson’s biography, so some of its enjoyably diverse array of contributors were people he’s meeting for the first time, and from whom he’s discovering fascinating new information about recurring themes in Dali’s art, as well as about controversial questions regarding his later financial circumstances and weird personal life.
