Films with the stuff that dreams are made of
"The dream remains the epitome of the fantastic in film," wrote French critic Andre Bazin - meaning that the shared realism of cinema and dreams are perfectly matched to manipulate the perceptive power of the human mind. Filmmakers have always known this and, like Christopher Nolan in "Inception," have mined the unconscious mind to keep audiences awake at night.
"The dream remains the epitome of the fantastic in film," wrote French critic Andre Bazin - meaning that the shared realism of cinema and dreams are perfectly matched to manipulate the perceptive power of the human mind. Filmmakers have always known this and, like Christopher Nolan in "Inception," have mined the unconscious mind to keep audiences awake at night.
"The Wizard of Oz" (1939): Not to burst anyone's bubble, but Dorothy does get a smack on the head and eventually wakes up back in her own bedroom. In the meantime, the people from her life in Kansas - from the evil Miss Gulch to farm hands Hunk, Zeke and Hickory - show up fantastically transformed by her musical unconscious.
"Spellbound" (1945): Classic Hitchcock thriller starring Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck and Leo G. Carroll includes the analysis of Peck's troubled character and his dream - in a sequence designed by Salvador Dali that includes eyes, curtains, scissors, blank playing cards, a man with no face and a man falling off a building. Out of this, somehow, the characters solve a murder.
"8 1/2" (1963): Federico Fellini's masterpiece of introspection (and musings about his own genius) chronicles the agonies and exasperations of a film director named Guido, who, in trying to sort out his life and art, retraces his memories and dreams.
"A Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984): The original and all the little "Elm Streets" were based on the idea that the razor-fingered Freddy Krueger would kill his victims in their sleep, unaccompanied by Harold Arlen.
"Akira Kurosawa's Dreams" (1990): Image-driven series of vignettes based on the fabled Japanese director's own dreams. It features a turn by Martin Scorsese as Vincent Van Gogh.
"Arizona Dream" (1993): Underappreciated black comedy from Emir Kusturica stars Vincent Gallo, Paulina Porizkova, Jerry Lewis, Faye Dunaway and Johnny Depp, who dreams about an Eskimo catching a rare halibut and winds up in Arizona with a bunch of other dreamers - including Gallo, who re-creates the crop-duster scene from "North by Northwest."
"In Dreams" (1999): Neil Jordan-directed thriller sums up an entire genre of dream-oriented fiction, in which the protagonist (here played by Annette Bening) dreams about things that later happen.