By the time she made The Seashell and the Clergyman, an adaptation of a scenario by Antonin Artaud, Germaine Dulac (1882–1942) was a leading figure in French avant-garde cinema. She had already made over a dozen films, including conventional melodramas, and experimental works. In Seashell, Dulac uses innovative cinematography and rhythmic editing to suggest the extreme emotional states and obsessive fantasies of the titular cleric. Multidisciplinary artist Jean Cocteau also explored the poetic possibilities of cinema. The Blood of a Poet shows an artist possessed by his work, who is taken on a labyrinthine journey through the portal of his studio mirror.