Canadian director and cinephile Guy Maddin once said: “I feel a bit like Dracula in Winnipeg. I'm safe, but I can travel abroad and absorb all sorts of ideas from other directors… Then I can come back here and accumulate these cinematic clichés and devices.” Here, Maddin addresses his cinema, saying that he takes aspects from different cinematic styles and appropriates them into his work. In The Saddest Music in the World (2003), Maddin uses a combination of French surrealist cinema and classical American Hollywood cinema, especially melodrama, to create his own style. In an article by William Beard, Steven Shaviro talks about Maddin's cinema and links Surrealism and melodrama together by saying: "Maddin's films are driven by a tension between romantic excess [melodrama] on the one hand and absurdist humor [Surrealism ] on the other.” As for The Saddest Music in the World, the relationship between surrealism and melodrama is not one of tension, as Shaviro suggests, but of cooperation. This article will analyze two films by directors Maddin knew well: Un Chien Andalou (1929) by Luis Buñuel. and Salvador Dali from the surrealist side, and Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Permits (1955) from the melodramatic side, to show the important elements of each, concluding with an analysis of The Saddest Music in the World along with both film styles Finally, it will be shown how Guy Maddin combines French surrealist cinema and Hollywood melodrama in The Saddest Music in the World, to create his unique film style Chien Andalou (1929) by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali is the quintessential surrealist film, including shocking images, non-linear time, black humor, oddities and a specific editing method... middle of paper... The most sad world. DVD. Directed by Guy Maddin. 2003; Winnipeg: MGM Home Entertainment, 2004. Un Chien Andalou. Youtube. Directed by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalì. France.Barba William. “Maddin and melodrama”. Canadian Journal of Film Studies 14.2 (2005): 2-15.Beebe, John. “Canadian Surrealism”. The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal 23.3 (2004): 85-89.Coombs, Neil. Study surrealist and fantasy films. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Losier, Marie and Porton, Richard. “The Pleasures of Melancholy: An Interview with Guy Maddin.” Cineaste 29.3 (2004): 18-25.Semley, John. “From Big Snow to Big Sadness: The Repatriation of Canadian Cultural Identity in the Films of Guy Maddin.” Cineaction 73 (2008): 32-37.White, Kenneth. "Forget Your Wish: The Cinema of Guy Maddin." Millennium cinema diary 45/46 (2006): 133-139.