Figure 2-3: Mary Smith is suddenly hit by the fur coat

 Using a familiar object to evoke the uncanny has been quintessential to Surrealist

discourse. After all, Louis Aragon acknowledged early on cinema's ability to alter

everyday obj ects, such that "obj ects that were a few moments ago sticks of furniture or

books of cloakroom tickets are transformed to the point where they take on menacing or

enigmatic meanings" (52). But such mysterious transformations are more likely in the

phantasmic worlds of Louis Feuillade's Fant6mas (1913) or the dream-like images of

Luis Buhiuel's L 'Age d'Or (193 0).3 Indeed, the fur coat would belong more readily in the

pages of Rene Magritte's Fur Catalog for La Maison Samuel. In a screwball comedy, is

such an uncanny moment just an odd interruption to be dismissed as interesting but

insignificant? Just a "funny" thing to be regarded as curious but inconsequential?

 Academic film criticism has not directly addressed such moments that exceed their

narrative contexts. These moments are usually overlooked in film histories that tend to