It is interesting to see how the posts in this thread suggest a kind of
taxonomy of dream-related films:
1. Films which treat Freud or psychoanalysis directly (Huston's Freud, etc.);
2. Films which dramatise the analytic situation in some way (Spellbound,
Now Voyager, Marnie);
3. Films containing short dream sequences (Spellbound, Fellini's 8 1/2,
Vertigo, Valie Export's Invisible Adversaries);
4. Films which are structured around the conceit of a dream (Caligari,
Wizard of Oz, Lang's Woman in the Window);
5. Films whose images are constructed according to the rules of dream-work,
i.e. employing condensation, displacement and so on (Buñuel's L'Age D'Or
and other surrealist films);
6. Films which are "Freudian" in several overlapping ways cited above, or
which imply a spectatorial relation for which one may account in
psychoanalytic terms (all of Hitchcock, Eyes Wide Shut, etc. If we consider
Christian Metz and the notion of wish-fulfillment, as someone suggested
earlier, this category might start to include the whole of cinema).
I am curious about whether anyone has thought of other categories for such
a taxonomy, or films which do not fit any of the above.
Also, for a different take on film and dream, see Gilles Deleuze's section
on the onirosign or dream-image in _Cinema 2: the time-image_. Deleuze
relates the dream-image to the "dream-worlds" presented in the Hollywood
musical genre.
Homay King · Dept of Rhetoric · 7408 Dwinelle Hall · UC Berkeley ·
Berkeley, CA 94720-2670
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