Ebert's review of Un chien andalou provides both a good analysis of the film to use as a comparison to The Seashell and the Clergyman and a good example of the main arguments put forth in support of Un chien andalou as the first Surrealist film.  According to Ebert, the idea for the film originated from a discussion between Dalí and Buñuel about dreams they had had, prompting them to make a film beginning with images from their dreams.  “In collaborating on the scenario, their method was to toss shocking images or events at one another. Both had to agree before a shot was included in the film. 'No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted,' Bunuel remembered. 'We had to open all doors to the irrational and keep only those images that surprised us, without trying to explain why'” (Ebert).  Ebert also asserts the historical primacy of the film: “It was made in the hope of administering a revolutionary shock to society. 'For the first time in the history of the cinema,' wrote the critic Ado Kyrou, 'a director tries not to please but rather to alienate nearly all potential spectators.'”
    Ebert's review provides much useful information for a comparison of Un chien andalou and The Seashell and the Clergyman and the theories behind them.  To begin with, the technique used by  Dalí and Buñuel in writing their film was quite different than those used by Dulac and those theorized by Artaud.  Ebert argues that Dalí and Buñuel sought to create a film entirely devoid of meaning with no rational connection between any of events or images, essentially a film of pure nonsense.  This varies considerably from Artaud's ideas of creating an experience that betrays a traditional narrative setting (requiring at least some connections between parts of the film) in order to include the spectator in the film.  The goal of  Dalí and Buñuel was to create a film that left the viewer with nothing and no ability to derive meaning from the experience; whereas, Artaud's goal was to force the audience to be a part of the dream world and create interpretations and conclusions on their own.  Additionally, the technique of throwing illogical, surprising images at the audience used by Dalí and Buñuel was a primary technique in Dulac's film as well.  Ebert and Kyrou advocate the uniqueness of Un chien andalou as film's first attempt to alienate an audience, but ignore the attempts of The Seashell and the Clergyman to alienate the audience from identification with the film and many other previous films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Impressionist films.  While differences between Un chien andalou and The Seashell and the Clergyman may be noted from their difference in purpose, the theory and techniques used in both originated with Dulac's film.

Ebert, Roger. "Un chien andalou (1928)." Rev. of Chicago Sun-Times. Chicago Sun-Times 16 Apr. 2000.

           Inez Hedges's review of Linda Williams's book Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film argues that Williams's analysis of only films “that were a historical part of the surrealist movement and were developed in direct contact with surrealist theory” (824) works well as a method of analyzing Surrealist cinema.  Williams uses Un chien andalou as a case study for analyzing the relationship between images and desire in Surrealist works and delves into the methods used by Buñuel to “[place] the viewer's experience in the uneasy zone between the imaginary and the symbolic, and [force] a confrontation with the very psychic energy that enables [him or] her to enjoy films," a method she views as common in Surrealist films' attempts to “[break] up the spectator's process of identification with the characters” (825).  She goes further in this analysis concluding that the film “sets up a conventional narrative space and then violates it, leaving the spectator especially vulnerable to the surrealist message" (Hedges 825) and then extends this analysis to other films such as Le Fantôme de la liberté, Cet obscur objet du désir, and L'Age d'or.
          Hedges's article provides a means of clarifying Linda Williams's theory of Surrealist film goals and practices combined with Flitterman-Lewis's writings on Artaud's intentions enable a better analysis of The Seashell and the Clergyman and its place in Surrealist film history.  Flitterman-Lewis argues that Artaud's main objection to Dulac's film was the lack of an experience forced upon the viewer.  This experience, in the view of Williams, results from the lack of character identification; without being able to identify with a character in the film and thus experience the thoughts, actions, feelings, and ideas (or as Williams would characterize them, desires) of that character, the viewer is forced into his or her own experience, one which requires the viewer to interpret, experience, and judge events and actions in the film rather than relying on characters to do so.  Flitterman-Lewis outlines common techniques used to establish this situation (superimposition, split shots, lighting, etc.) and provides an analysis of how The Seashell and the Clergyman also establishes such a situation.  Therefore, by examining Williams's theory and Flitterman-Lewis's evaluations of Artaud and the film, it is possible to construct a framework for evaluating what constitutes a Surrealist film and whether or not The Seashell and the Clergyman fits into that framework (an argument which Flitterman-Lewis makes well when it is placed into Williams's theoretical framework.)

Hedges, Inez. "Review: [untitled]." The French Review 59 (1986): 824-25.

            Linda William's article reviews Steven Kovàcs's book From Enchantment to Rage: The Story of Surrealist Cinema and offers a method of examining the history of Surrealist cinema, namely “a return to the history of Surrealism proper: how the Surrealist poets and artists in the main phase of the movement (1923-1930) turned their talent and energy to film; how their painting, photography, and poetry found new forms of expression in this emerging art; the development of this new aesthetics of film from the 'enchantment' of the early twenties to the 'rage' typified by the 1930 L'Age d'or" (Williams 41).  William's chastises Kovàcs's lack of significant analysis of the role of dreams in Surrealist film, an element she views as extremely important to understanding the goals of the movement.  To illustrate this point, she takes the example of Kovàcs's examination of Dalí and Buñuel: "the issue points out a problem in the book's general approach: an assessment of Surrealist cinema is not a question of sorting out individual personalities and their contributions.  If Surrealism deserves its 'ism' then there is something more to Buñuel and Dalí's collaboration than the fortuitous encounter of two individual psychic obsessions.  To my mind that something is to be found in the formal procedures of the unconscious which Buñuel and Dalí so brilliantly adapted to the creation of their films" (Williams 42).
            Williams's review offers two important tools for the examination of The Seashell and the Clergyman: first, she argues that an examination of the history of Surrealist film should focus on how Surrealist artists turned their ideas into film and how film enabled a method of expression unavailable in other art forms; and second, she highlights the importance of dreams, their structure, and their natural functioning and the role they played in the making of Surrealist films.  The first tool lends more analysis to Flitterman-Lewis's examination of Artaud's paradoxical claim that The Seashell and the Clergyman was the first surrealist film despite his insistence that Dulac failed to recreate more than the material appearance of construction of dreams, without expressing an experience of dreaming.  William's method of analysis would factor in the exclusion of Artaud from the artistic direction of the film, separating Artaud from the ability to express through film and leaving it entirely up to Dulac.  To resolve this seeming paradox, the only logical conclusion must be that Artaud found the film to be an adequate Surrealist expression of the dream, though it was not an interpretation true to his understanding and visualization of the scenario.  Williams places the “main phase” of the movement within the period 1923-30, ending just after The Seashell and the Clergyman and Un chien andalou were made, thus reinforcing Flitterman-Lewis's agument that Dulac and Artaud's film was the first Surrealist film due to the amount in terms of technique and means of expression that later movies would borrow from it.

Williams, Linda. "From Enchantment to Rage: The Story of Surrealist Cinema." Film Quarterly 34 (1981): 41-42.