Here's something about as far up my alley as it's possible to get. While I write book reviews here at the Nameless Zine, the books I write tend to be about film because I'm a film guy, especially a classic film guy, and I particularly relish exploring the nooks and crannies of cinematic history. So does Josh Frank, who adapted this graphic novel from an unproduced screenplay by Salvador Dalí that would, had Hollywood been interested, have starred the Marx Brothers. That's a powerfully teasing combination.

Well, it took "an archaeologist of forgotten pop culture", as Frank describes himself, to bring it to life, at least as this graphic novel, which is arguably the best format for it. There are parts that I'd love to see on film, most of all the various scenes when Surrealist Woman changes the world in her own image, but it doesn't scream filmable to me. Then again, whenever someone says something isn't filmable, someone else films it. Look at 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'.

The film historian in me found the additional material just as fascinating as the core adaptation of Dalí's script. There's quite a lot of it too, an introductory essay by Frank; a foreword from Bill Marx, Harpo's son; and an illustrated exploration of the history of Dalí's time in the States, when he met Harpo Marx, Walt Disney and Cecil B. De Mille and gradually put this project together. It seems like it grew out of his own situation, as a refugee of sorts from his own country and even his own artist's collective. The lead character is Jimmy, to be played by Harpo Marx, and he feels like a wish-fulfilment avatar for Dalí himself.

Put simply, Frank worked through a compilation of Dalí's film projects, kept in the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation in Figueres, Spain and translated from the Portugese by someone on Craigslist; Dalí's notebook for the project, housed in the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France and translated by a French friend of his; a roundtable of ideas set up by collaborator Tim Heidecker of 'Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Good Job!'; the visual element brought to life by Manuela Portega, a wonderful artist from Barcelona who communicated with him through Google Translate; and songs by Noah Diamond who had revived 'I'll Say She Is', a Marx Brothers off-Broadway musical.

It's a weird but wildly ambitious project and I had a blast with it, even if I don't remotely see how it could have been filmed. Neither could Harpo's wife, Susan, who called it "terribly silly stuff that made no sense at all." For his part, Groucho was more succinct. "It won't play," he said, and he was probably right on the money. That doesn't stop him livening up this story in fictional form, even if his character has no name. He does what Groucho does and, while I'd certainly heard some of the jokes before, others hit wonderfully. Chico similarly does what Chico does but doesn't get much of an opportunity to do it.

The core of the story is a love triangle, because Jimmy starts out with Linda, to whom he seems to be engaged, but falls instead for Surrealist Woman, much to Linda's distaste.

Linda is beautiful but otherwise completely worthless, snobbish and vulgar, with no character of her own, just what she can copy off others and pretend to have come up with it first, all to ensure she remains in the spotlight at the centre of everyone's notice. She's not far adrift from the sort of modern celebrity who's famous for being famous. In Dalí's notes, she represents "the practical and rational life of contemporary society".

Surrealist Woman is utterly different, what Dalí described as "the imaginative life as depicted in the old myths", and we never quite catch a proper glimpse of her. She's always somehow outside our vision, even when we're utterly focused on her and, above everything else, that's something that I can't imagine being translated to film, except perhaps through animation. Imagination is a bright star and we can't look at it too closely without burning our eyes. We have to feel it and let it flow through us.

The setup scene unfolds at Chey Phoenix, where Jimmy is theoretically dining with Linda but isn't really part of her clique. She arrives with her lover, Michael, and an entourage of others, creating a barrage of conversation that Jimmy escapes by climbing over the balcony into the crowd. When Surrealist Woman appears, as she must, given that everybody is talking about her already, that's the cue for Jimmy to shift from a Spanish aristocrat whose genius business acumen is making his shareholders rich to the very recognisable form of Harpo Marx, as whom he accompanies a pair of songs, the first sung by Groucho and the second emoted by Surrealist Woman. Linda didn't know he could even play an instrument.

At the end of Act I, Jimmy washes his hands of Linda, giving her to Michael, but she refuses to let him go and pursues him throughout the rest of the story. She hosts a party to counter Surrealist Woman's and, after the latter changes the world in her own image, brings her to court for wilful damage to everything. Not all of it makes sense, except to riff off the theme and much, perhaps most, of it frankly works best as static art. I adored Pertaga's artwork, especially when it flows in tunnels and rivers like the world's weirdest game of snakes and ladders.

Tellingly, if I'm reading it right, Surrealist Woman identifies herself late on as Dalí's daughter, a suggestion that's probably metaphorical rather than literal and which she lives up to. As a fan of his surrealist art and a fan of the Marx Brothers' absurdist films, I had a blast with this, but I can also see why the project came to nothing in 1937. The final word may go to Groucho's character, a neat meta jab at the Production Code then in effect as a crippling effect on creativity: "It's 1937, anything I come up with will end up on the cutting room floor." It didn't even get that far, but it's fascinating nonetheless. ~~ Hal C F Astell