Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Charles Herold (cherold) This quirky surrealist film follows the adventures of a dream seller as he supplies dreams to his mixed clientele.The dreams were created by various artists, and the quality and style varies. Max Ernst comes the closest to creating something with a real feel for dream logic involving the saving of a woman, although it was a little slow. Richter also comes close with the final, blue-faced sequence. Marcel Duchamp and Alexander Caldwell, on the other hand, both contribute simple movement pieces, although Caldwell also offers a somewhat interesting stop-motion circus scene.The most interesting piece is by the one artist I've never heard of, Fernand Leger, a clever musical piece involving mannequins.Avant-garde works being what they are, you probably wouldn't know this was made in 1947 if you weren't told, as filmmakers today will go for a retro style. It's a mixed bag, but I'd say it's worth watching if you're interested in surrealism.

MARIO GAUCI I had long been interested in watching this one (and had even toyed with the idea of acquiring its BFI PAL VHS in the mid-1990s) but, having now caught up with the film, I cannot say that the end result fully lived up to expectations!It is quite a unique effort, mind you, but very uneven in tone – a reflection of the many 'cooks' involved in the 'broth' since, despite the overall credit to Richter, many another avant-garde artist was responsible for the various dream sequences that basically comprise the narrative (Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, Man Ray, etc.). This is also why I preceded its viewing with a number of shorts by all these exponents of experimental cinema and, for what it is worth, I opted to check the film out on the day of Richter's own birthday!The concept is an intriguing, even noir-ish, one – accentuated by the initially down-on-his-luck protagonist and constant voice-over. The fantasies range from the romantic (a henpecked man braving a labyrinth for the sake of his idealized beloved recalls the work of Jean Cocteau) to the musical ('sung' by a mannequin and dreamt by a geeky girl liberated to femme fatale status by the hero's attentions), and from the prescient (the audience at an interactive movie theater imitate every move of the actors on-screen) to the insipid (a lazily derivative 'rotating shapes' display by Duchamp serving as the visions of a gangster type – who on earth but mathematicians dreams of such things anyway?!). The last hallucination, then, is reserved for the leading man himself – his assuming a blue countenance at this point presumably representing his own uniqueness (in view of the gift he is able to 'bestow' upon others). As I said, this is more worth watching for its intentions than for what is ultimately achieved; the colour scheme, at least, makes it that more palatable to the adventurous movie-buff. Incidentally, we also have here one of the very earliest examples of a pre-credits sequence on celluloid.

Eumenides_0 Hans Richter, original Dada member and an important figure in keeping alive the memory of the 20th century's greatest art movement (his memoirs 'Dada: Art and Anti-Art' is one of the most touching non-fiction books I've ever read), was also a pretty good filmmaker. He started making shorts in the '20s, much in the vein of the avant-garde cinema that Buñuel, Cocteau, and Man Ray were doing at the time. In 1947 he got together with a few Dada friends - Ray, Duchamp, Max Ernst, etc. - and made Dreams That Money Can Buy, one of the most beautiful avant-garde movies ever made.Joe, a down-on-his-luck everyman, finds out he has the ability to create dreams for people. Because we live in dull, colorless world, he has no trouble finding customers in need of dreams. This is really a frame narrative for the heart of the movie: the seven dreams composed by the artists. Each one is inventive and unpredictable; some have people, other wire toys; and some are just abstract images without nexus.Dreams That Money Can Buy is a pretty complete movie: it has musical, comedy, film noir, and drama. It also has what seems like the beginnings of stop-motion animation, which Czech filmmakers like Jan Svankmajer and Jirí­ Trnka would later perfect. The voice-over is detached and sarcastic, making fun of everything happening, much like the narrators of writers Milan Kundera or José Saramago.Shot over sixty years ago, Richter's movie still looks modern and innovative. It fills the viewer's head with ideas and bubbles with potential that most cinema seldom explores. With world cinema going through a dull phase, rediscovering this movie could only help directors and screenwriters leave their lethargy and attempt something new.

Joseph Sylvers Hans Richter and some of his friends in the old time surreal avant-garde gang; Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Max Ernst, decide to get together and direct a surprisingly accessible (for these guys this is Oceans 11), film about a man who sets up a business selling dreams to people, who cant' have any of there own. After all, as our narrator Joe, informs us, "If you can look inside yourself, other people shouldn't be any problem".Assorted "characters" come into the Dream shop, a gangster, a repressed banker, an overzealous pamphleteer, a blind man, a bored housewife, etc, and all are given dreams, each one directed by a different surrealist; Ernst, Duchamp, Ray, etc. Which alternately, delight, offend, disturb, and annoy there patrons.In that respect it's a little like an anthology film, with each dream, a story in the story, the best of which is a satire of conventional(1940's) relationships, staring two mannequins who fall in love and get married. It's a surprisingly charming and funny little feminist music video (I want the soundtrack, just for this sequence). Though the rest of the music is handled by experimental composer John Cage, who gives the film both a traditional comedic tone and one of ambiguous drones and general avant-garishness.The narrative of the framing tale, that is the story of Joe, owner and dream weaver of the business, is also distinct in that, none of the characters mouths move, and when dialog does take place on screen it comes as voice over, usually with one characters monologues followed by the others...most of which is spoken in a kind of Beat style rhyming (this is also a decade before any of the big Beat writers Keroac, Ginsberg, etc, start publishing.). That though a bit silly at first, actually enriches the story, really quite beyond, any individual dream sequence.If you like early avant-garde films or the artists involved, this is an absolute must see, but if your also just interested in early comic fantasy, stories about dreams, poetry, or just watching something visually different, that doesn't just dismiss narrative as a nuisance, it's worth the price of admission. Few films see the relationship of dream, cinema, and audience this clearly or distantly.It's the feel good avant-garde comedy of the 40s! If only it would get released on DVD already...