Dreams That Money Can Buy is a 1947 American drama film written, produced, and directed by Hans Richter, a German with a background in the dadaist and constructivist art movements.
The color film consists of a frame story and a series of dream sequences that were created by different modernist artists.
Collaborators included Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Alexander Calder, Darius Milhaud and Fernand Léger.
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.
"), and sets up a business in his room, selling tailor-made dreams to a variety of frustrated and neurotic clients.
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.
Jail bars appear by her bed, and a voyeuristic man watches from behind them as the woman dreams of nightingales with calves' hooves.
The telephone by her bedside falls to the floor, breaks open and exudes a misty smoke, which envelops her bed.
One of the young men and a woman are pulled from underneath the bed by a man dressed as a formal authority figure (Max Ernst).
The voyeur man watching breaks through the jail bars and enters the bedroom, raising the woman from her bed, and they embrace.
Case number two ("The Girl With the Prefabricated Heart") begins as Joe accepts payment from Mr. A and ends his session, as a young woman wearing a suit, glasses, and a beret enters the room carrying a briefcase, and Mrs. A returns and glares.
Whirling wheel graphics punctuate the scenes as jewellery is offered to "a healthy girl", Julie, as the male singer/mannequin woos her.
The male mannequin is beheaded as Julie rides on an exercise cycle dressed in a bridal gown.
On the back cover is a photo of Man Ray, the author, and we see superimposed a procession of wounded soldiers.
The dream consists of spinning disc illusions (by Marcel Duchamp) and a prism distorted version of “Nude Descending a Staircase.” The gangster is unimpressed and robs Joe at gunpoint.
Joe finds a blue poker chip that the little girl left on the floor and he enters his own autobiographical dream.
“As with most things experimental—at least, in the cinema form—this effort of Mr. Richter's and of his collaborators, has obvious flaws,” wrote New York Times critic Bosley Crowther.
“Most obvious, perhaps, to the stickler will be the purely technical faults of bad lighting, poor sound recording and faint color through much of the film.
Without modern special effects, it is more impressive that Ernst used choreography, sleight of hand, and surrealistic sets to capture the dreamlike quality of content and transitions.
There is a scene in which red velvet curtains behind a woman suddenly become her dress that feels exactly like the film-goer is dreaming.
Ernst was obviously an astute observer of what qualities go into making an experience oneiric.” Barrett also liked Richter’s own sequence which Crowther had dismissed.
“The only other artist's sequence which tries for a realistic recreation of a night-time dream is Richter's in which a man stops himself from committing a murder but nevertheless finds a bloody knife in his hand.