Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s theory of modern allegory, I argue that the narrative arc of The Exterminating Angel ushers in a spatiotemporal ‘collapse’ of diegetic time and slippage into ‘allegorical’ time. By distorting sonic elements (i.e. motives, cycles and topics), Adès establishes a musico-dramatic opposition in the course of the opera between false optimism and the eventuality of doom. This opposition translates into a battle between the socialites’ wilful interventions and the force that strips them of their will. In what I refer to as ‘allegorical’ time, the distinction between past, present and future dissolves, and the protagonists as well as the sonic elements are stripped of their identities and, by the end of the opera, disappear into an existential void. While the narrative trajectory follows the arc of dramatic irony, the conclusion of the opera defies resolution through the suspension of telos.

Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s Un chien andalou (1929) and L’âge d’or (1930) are often considered to be both the beginning and the end of surrealist cinema. But such hasty contentions obscure a rich tradition of surrealist filmmaking. This chapter discusses the defining characteristics of Buñuel and Dalí’s pioneering films, before proceeding to demonstrate that while the broader surrealist film tradition is notably indebted to these early experiments, it is also marked by an astounding heterogeneity. Surrealist filmmakers in France, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia have employed a range of formats, including documentary, feature film, and animation, from the 1930s up to the present. Providing an overview of surrealist film in a wider context, the chapter looks at how Michel Zimbacca’s documentary films interrogate notions of Western supremacy, Nelly Kaplan’s feature films depict anarchic revolts against patriarchy, and Jan Švankmajer’s films use animation to give life to inert matter in inventive ways.