Feminist filmmaker and writer Germaine Dulac provides a distinctly lyrical interpretation of a text by Antonin Artaud. British censors banned the film with the edict, “If this film has a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable.”

In his first foray into film, artist and poet Jean Cocteau created this vivid and highly personal portrait of “the poet’s inner self,” filled with signature images of beauty, suffering, and renewal. While composed in four distinct episodes, the action of the film ostensibly takes place in the brief moment between the collapse of a chimney and its hitting the ground.