The surrealistic quality of melies short films is provoked by a group of stylistic elements . His dramatic ,fictional behaviour in front of the camera for one makes little effort to humanize the narrative. His "cine magic" techniques found spontaneously, such as his cutting and pasting of frames take on a rhythm and pace of their own. The materialism and dissonance these tricks exhibit disrupts the viewers engagement . This makes the viewer conscious they are viewing a film, this is not a criticism of melies direction, these qualities provoke the viewers awareness of their being and gives them ground to compare the film to reality, reality being the environment in which they view the film.the film then is surreal to the audience.
A contrast to eisenstien who engages the audience through montage. Eisensteins powerful use of the montage, which embodies music, composition and balance, the closeup and landscape portraits is a vehicle inwhich to take the audience to another perspective and realms outside of the cinema. This can be surreal but the viewer is not conscious untill the engagement is broken .
this is a response rodney to your preceding post, i may continue to elaborate on this one next blog
