He writes: The Seashell and the Clergyman penetrates the skin of material reality and plunges the viewer into an unstable landscape where the image cannot be trusted.

Both The Smiling Madame Beudet (1922) and The Seashell and the Clergyman are important early examples of radical experimental feminist filmmaking, and provide an antidote to the art made by the surrealist brotherhood.

The latter film, an interpretation of Anton Artaud’s book of the same name, is a visually imaginative critique of patriarchy – state and church – and of male sexuality.

[10] For the 2005 Kino International DVD collection Avant-garde: experimental cinema of the 1920s and '30s, the guitarist Larry Marotta provided the film's soundtrack.

[12] In March 2011, Imogen Heap performed an acappella score of her own composition with the Holst Singers as part of the Birds Eye View festival.

[citation needed] A new score by Sheffield musicians In the Nursery was performed live to accompany a showing of the film on 9 June 2019[16] and released on CD on 25 October 2019.