“The story of a condemned man reliving his relationship with a childhood sweetheart, Peter Ibbetson is well known as one of the most beautifully photographed American films (Charles Lang was the cameraman) and an example of Hollywood romanticism at its most extreme. Though not too well known in this country, Peter Ibbetson inspired the French Surrealists to wild flights of paroxysmic prose-poetry, as witness these examples. ‘This prodigious film, this triumph of surrealist thinking' (Andre Breton, in ‘L'amour Fou'). ‘(V)ictory over time and death is the theme of Peter Ibbetson...(which) centers around the most marvelous case of cinematographic “mad love.” Since childhood, Mary and Peter (Ann Harding and Gary Cooper) have been in love. This love, this feeling, day after day more intense, more burning, forbids them to part. In an ultimate gesture of destruction of the concepts of time and space, the lovers meet and really love, the dream reaches its true grandeur, and embodying itself, unites their two bodies. Human conventions, death itself, everything is trampled by this love, more powerful than anything. Rational logic falls apart, stock ideas are only houses made of cards.... This film, insofar as it shows the ultimate defeat of anything which opposes itself to love, should be screened regularly in all the movie theatres all over the world' (Ado Kyrou, “Surrealism in Film”).” --“Treasures from the UCLA Film Archives,” PFA Publication