Surrealist painter and Dada film-theorist Hans Richter wrote, produced, and directed the experimental exercise Dreams That Money Can Buy, one of the most significant contributions to the 20th-century "avant garde" movement. The project began in 1944, while Richter was director of the Institute of Film Techniques at City College in New York. Combining short scenarios written by such world-renowned artists as Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamps, Man Ray, Alexander Calder and Fernand Leger, Richter came up with a full-color, feature-length study in dreamlike "wish fulfillment." The film's only nod to continuity is the presence of a self-styled heavenly psychiatrist, whose patients purportedly visualize the images which play across the screen. Described by one observer as "surreal yet somewhat Jungian," Dreams That Money Can Buy cost $25,000 and was three years in the making (Richter liked to take his time: his later Dadascope took five years!) Its New York premiere was greeted with a mixture of bravos and bewilderment, especially when the projectionist elected to show the film on the wall and ceiling rather than the screen. One assumes that the projectionist was less capricious when Dreams That Money Can Buy won a special prize at the 1947 Venice Film Festival. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Cast
Max Ernst
Credit
Hans Richter - Director, John Cage - Composer (Music Score), John Latouche - Composer (Music Score), Louis Applebuam - Composer (Music Score), Paul Bowles - Composer (Music Score), Darius Milhaud - Composer (Music Score), David Diamond - Composer (Music Score), Arnold Eagle - Cinematographer, Hans Richter - Producer, Max Ernst - Screen Story, Marcel Duchamp - Screen Story, Fernand Léger - Screen Story, Alexander Calder - Screen Story, Man Ray - Screenwriter, Hans Richter - Screenwriter
Joe/Narcissus (Jack Bittner) is an ordinary man who has recently signed a complicated lease on a room. As he wonders how to pay the rent, he discovers that he can see the contents of his mind unfolding whilst looking into his eyes in the mirror. He realises that he can apply his gift to others ("If you can look inside yourself, you can look inside anyone!"), and sets up a business in his room, selling tailor-made dreams to a variety of frustrated and neurotic clients. Each of the seven surrealdream sequences in the diegesis is in fact the creation of a contemporary avant-garde and/or surrealist artist, as follows:
Joe's waiting room is full within minutes of his first day of operation, "the first installment on the 2 billion clients" according to the male narrator in voiceover, whose voice is the only one we hear in the non-dream sequences.
Case number one is Mr and Mrs A. Mr A is a "methodical, exact" bank clerk. His wife "complains [he] has a mind like a double entry column; no virtues, no vices". She wants a dream for him "with practical values to widen his horizons, heighten ambitions, maybe a raise in salary". Joe asks Mrs A to leave the room during Mr A's consultation. Mr A reveals that within his ledger he has a collection of art images cut from magazines, including drawings of a woman reclining in bed; another on an old man's lap; another being shot by an animal-headed man; a filmic image of red liquid passing through water, and another of a melting wax figure of a woman.
Joe "finds a dream" for Mr A based on these interests. In the dream ("Desire") leaves fall to the ground beside a red curtain. A woman in white reclines in a red-curtained four-poster bed. A small golden ball rises and falls from her mouth as she breathes. She swallows the ball, smiles and falls asleep. Bars appear by her bed, and a man watches from behind them as she dreams of nightingales with calves' hooves. It appears the man is part of her dream, and telephones her to ask in voiceover for details. She tells him in voiceover "they talked about love and pleasure". Her telephone falls to the floor and excludes a misty smoke, which envelops her bed.
