People's suggestions on this topic--how to choose a movie to watch after
reading Freud's _Interpretation of Dreams_ have been wonderful.

I might suggest concentrating on the four dream mechanisms:  condensation,
displacement, secondary revision and considerations of representability.
These can be applied to any symbolic production, whether a dream or a film.
(I think Metz does as much.)

Scottie's dream in _Vertigo_ is quite short, but it's quite interesting,
too.  It also shows that he knows more than he realizes--so it demonstrates
unconscious knowledge.

Woody Allen's _Annie Hall_, although it contains no dreams, is structured
along logical principles that are more like a dream because the film eschews
chronology.

His _Stardust Memories_ starts with a dream and includes several dreams,
though, so that might be useful.

Cronenberg's _Naked Lunch_ is about a trip (both physical and drug-induced),
but the dream mechanisms are there.  On that count, perhaps _Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas_ would also work.

I second the idea that _Eyes Wide Shut_ and Bunuel would work well.  _Belle
de jour_ might be especially good, as it becomes increasingly dreamlike as
it goes on, and one can wonder whose wishes are being fulfilled.

ANY Hitchcock could work if you examined the *audience*'s wishes and the
character's:  the character gets a wish fulfilled and is then punished for
it--which is like us betting two wishes fulfilled (for the character to get
what he wants, and for him to be punished).

E.g., in _Strangers on a Train_, the tennis player gets his wife out of the
way but then may be punished for having this wish.  We may want him free to
marry the pretty rich girl, but we also may resent him for this.

This of course brings up the question:  whose dream is it?  The filmmaker's?
The character's?  Or ours?  I think a good choice would confront this
question--by being able to be read along all three axes.

Indeed, when films are popular they must probably fulfill the wishes of both
the characters and the audience, and these wishes themselves are probably
contradictory, even within themselves.

Thus in _Love Story_, the romantic hero's wish for the girl is fulfilled,
but then he is punished because she gets cancer and dies.  Meanwhile, we are
supremely pleased that this smug, privileged idiot does not get to live
happily ever after (a resentful wish on our part).  We may feel guilty that
"our" wish magically causes the girl to die.  But then we can also
congratulate both him and ourselves for the fact that he "grows as a
person."  Hence we get our wishes fulfilled even though (or because) they're
contradictory.

It is the whole notion of conflicting wishes, or conflicts between wishes
and social sanctions that is at the heart of Freud's theory, together with
the way these conflicts are played out or written out by symbols.

Hence a film about dreams may not itself be the most dream-like.

One might instead say:  the dream is a mode of analysis.

Sincerely,
Edward R. O'Neill
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
Bryn Mawr College





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