Courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Salvador Dali was hired by Alfred Hitchcock to design the visuals for the trippy dream sequence in Hitchcock's classic 1945 film "Spellbound." Many of the artworks Dali created when working on the film, including this oil, are on display in the comprehensive "Dali: Painting & Film."

It's difficult to imagine a meeting of minds between surrealist painter Salvador Dali and everyone's favorite animation uncle, Walt Disney.

Only ardent fans of either self-promoting artist are aware of their collaboration, because it yielded mere seconds of an animated short — and apparent months of frustration, as the two realized that they, and the world, were not ready for a Dali-Disney work.

Their 1946 project, "Destino," was completed a few years ago. Thanks to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, it's possible to see "Destino" along with the rest of Dali's small, important body of work in the cinema.

The museum's "Dali: Painting & Film" exhibition intersperses nearly 100 of the Spanish artist's best paintings and sketches with projections of his collaborative or self-created movies. The exhibit makes a strong argument that Dali, despite his frustration with the medium, appreciated how celluloid could be used to explore the dreamlike state that he explored on canvas.

Dali's initial forays into film during the silent era were unsuccessful, leading him to state in 1927, "I don't believe that cinema can ever become an artistic form. It is a secondary form because too many people are involved in its creation. The only true means of producing a work of art is painting, in which only the eye and the point of a brush are employed."

But less than two years later, Dali, working with director Luis Buñuel, created "Un Chien Andalou" ("An Andalusian Dog"), a 16-minute film that still influences horror films and cutting-edge music videos. The most memorable sequence in the nonlinear work shows a woman's eye about to be sliced open by a razor blade and a cloud passing over a full moon in the same direction as the razor blade, followed by a cow's eye being cut. The images will shock many viewers who watch the film on a wall-size screen in the LACMA gallery.

Dali moved to California in the 1940s during the war and attempted to find a place in Hollywood. Few moviemakers knew how to use the famous painter, but Alfred Hitchcock had an idea.

Years later, in a TV interview, the master of movie thrillers explained why he asked producer David O. Selznick to hire Dali to design the dream sequence for "Spellbound," saying, "What I was after was the vividness of his dreams Dali's work is very solid and very sharp, with very long perspectives and black shadows Dali was the best man for me to do the dreams because that is what dreams should be."

The most memorable element of the dreams in "Spellbound" is the endless array of penetrating eyes staring into the soul of the protagonist, Dr. Edwards (Gregory Peck). The film earned Academy Award nominations for best special effects and cinematography, for which most critics give partial credit to Dali.

Viewing his paintings in context with the films, it becomes evident that Dali, with a brush and paint, used such film techniques as perspective, deep focus, and morphing two or more images to create another concept.

Dali was limited by early 20th-century technology in live-action films, which is why it made sense that he turned to animation, and to Walt Disney.

Mutual admiration between the two is evident. In a letter to poet André Breton, Dali wrote, "I have come to Hollywood and am in contact with the three great American Surrealists — the Marx Brothers, Cecil B. DeMille and Walt Disney."

In 1946, Disney commissioned Dali to help animate a short film. It was never finished, and Dali's time in the Burbank studio amounted to only a few seconds of footage and dozens of storyboards.

In 2003 animators returned to Dali's work for Disney and finished the seven-minute film "Destino," using notes from journals owned by Dali's wife, and with assistance from John Hench, who worked with Dali at Disney in 1946. The fantasy film centers on a woman dancing through the landscape of several Dali paintings. The "Destino" screening gallery at LACMA is surrounded by the original sketches, storyboards and paintings.

For insight on Dali the man, the exhibit features his appearance on "The Dick Cavett Show," as well as the humorous "Chaos and Creation" (1960), directed by Philippe Halsman, one of the first video films ever produced.

And even though Dali's personal output in film was small, it's clear that those forays into the genre, as well as his extensive body of paintings, remain deeply influential in today's movie industry.

E-mail freelance columnist Jeff Favre at jjfavre@yahoo.com.