This world of chance encounters seems quite distant from the standardized world of

studio filmmaking.10 Yet, the earliest Surrealists were drawn to it. "We used to walk the

cold, deserted streets," recalled Phillipe Soupault, "in search of an accident, an encounter,

life" (55). What the early Surrealists found, accidentally, was the American cinema,

through a sartorial detail on a movie poster, perhaps of Edwin S. Porter's The Great

Train Robbery (1903), showing "a man, his face covered with a red handkerchief, .

pointing a revolver at an unconcerned passersby" (Soupault 56). Like the objects in the

shop windows that enchanted the young flineurs during their walks down the old-

fashioned arcades, the publicitW poster evoked the capacity of an item of clothing to

create a tiny shock. But Hollywood wasn't quite as inviting. During lunch one afternoon,

Denise Tual happened to mention Luis Buniuel to L.B. Mayer, who claimed he had never

heard of the Spanish director. Tual filled him in, concluding by calling Buniuel "a great

director." Tual thought it would be nice if Mayer could arrange for directors like Buniuel,

Rene Clair, and Jean Renoir to "work on new ideas, new ways of making films" in

Hollywood. Mayer would have none of it. Was she proposing treating Hollywood as a

site for experiments? "If Hollywood needs to change its way of making films," he

snapped, "it'll happen, and quickly. We don't need a laboratory for that!" (qtd in Baxter

193). Once again, ostensibly at least, the association between Hollywood and Surrealism

is suppressed.

 There is, of course, no straight line of influence to be traced from Surrealist Paris to

Hollywood and back. What we have are moments when the association is suddenly

revealed, as in a lingering overhead shot that makes a fur coat enigmatic in an otherwise

fast-paced, madcap plot. When it falls on Mary Smith's head, she is sitting on the top