ABSTRACT
Surrealistic visuals have a long history in commercial cinema; the French Surrealists themselves were fans of Hollywood productions. Peter Frankfurt created specifically uncanny affects, considered in a case study of The Number 23 (2007). These effects invoke the subjective realism described by Surrealist Salvador Dalí’s “paranoiac-critical method.” This chapter develops this theory of subjective realism objectively presented as a potential of digital imaging processes. The shift from an “objective presentation” to a “subjective illustration” that describes defamiliarization is at the same time a narrative transformation (in the sense of cause-effect relations shown on-screen).
