La maltería de Quilmes y sus encadenamientos

Hans Richter is a well- known avant- garde filmmaker, having made several seminal short films during the 1920s and 1930s that established his formidable presence in abstract and surrealist film. His best known short, Rhythmus 21 (1921), uses only shapes— squares and rectangles— to explore cinematic space and depth. In this film Richter is interested in exploring the rhythms generated through spatial movement, where shapes appear to move along the flat plane of the screen surface. It is decidedly an abstract film, one where form and rhythm combine into patterns that are fundamentally about perception, illu- sion, and the movement of images. Richter’s film was influential on many levels and to many other filmmakers, so much so that when he made his first feature- length avant- garde film, he called upon his friends— luminaries in avant- garde art — to help him. The result, Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947), is an exper- imental narrative film that both harkens back to his early work but also force- fully looks ahead.

Dreams That Money Can Buy was the first American feature-length avant-

garde film. It boasts a list of “who’s who” in twentieth century avant- garde art: Both John Cage and Darius Milhaud worked on the musical score; Paul Bowles worked on some of the dialogue; and the film’s dream sequences were written and choreographed by Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, Max Ernst, Alexander Calder, Man Ray, and Richter himself. Despite this impressive pedigree, the film has remained obscure, or at least has not had as great an impact or lasting success as other feature-length avant- garde films like The Blood of a Poet or

L’Age d’Or. It is often viewed as a failed experiment, an exercise in too many

diverse styles that do not cohere in its weak narrative thread. The story revolves around a struggling artist (Joe) who discovers he has the ability to peer into the eyes of strangers and read their dreams after they fall asleep, almost hyp- notized. For a price, he will also deliver a “big dream” to them while they sleep. People enter his office room, which really suggests a departure from the waking world to the dream- world; when patrons enter their dreams, what we get is a representation of unconscious states full of strange imagery and music. Despite the eccentricities of the plot, and specifically the weirdness of the dreams, each dream sequence is full of emotion — particularly the last, which is about Joe himself. This narrative structure gives Richter the chance to call upon his friends to create separate dream sequences, which are the real avant- garde moments of the film. The seeming incongruity of diverse artists lends a certain historical and aesthetic credence to the film; Richter “was not opposed to the industrial appropriation of avant- garde techniques, [and] was actively committed to ensuring the autonomy of independently produced ‘poetic’ films.”25_{The dream}

sequences, which are all short films conceived by major artists, are exactly that — poetic films independently produced and used effectively to create a strong narrative avant- garde feature.

The film is a colorful narrative about dream- fulfillment, something akin to visualizing dream- states, also a projection of surrealist desire. It remains one of the most singular contributions to twentieth- century avant- garde film, mainly because it is so unorthodox, offering little commercial appeal (though it does liken itself to post-war film noir, although it parodies it just as it designs itself as film noir) but highly imaginative films- within- a-film. This approach really limits its appeal to spectators only interested in its novelty. Dreams That

Money Can Buy was made shortly after World War II, a time when post-war

anxiety, irrationality, and general malaise gripped the country. The Dada and surrealist- influenced films Richter made during the 1920s and 1930s were out of fashion (except for the practicing avant- garde filmmakers and amateurs), so the film might be read as a reflection of the unease that avant- garde artists felt at a moment of crisis in cinema culture and cinema history. Popular film — mainstream Hollywood production — was the dominant mode of film practice, and despite inroads into new forms and styles from the European nations that veered away from already established conventions, avant- garde filmmakers were

not as viable or threatening, despite the call to arms by filmmakers like Jean- Isidore Isou (who I will discuss next) or the beginnings of the New American avant- garde, with people like Maya Deren and Kenneth Anger. Still, Dreams

That Money Can Buy is a fascinating document that offers a stinging counter-

point to Hollywood’s Dream Factory: seven surrealist dream sequences con- ceived and directed by prominent members of the avant- garde.

Dreams That Money Can Buy may best be described as a merging of image,

music, and psychiatry. Richter (and the other co-contributors) plays with obscure psychical symbols that reflect dreams. (A more “mainstream” example of this very same idea occurs in Hitchcock’s Spellbound [1944], which has a famous dream sequence conceived by Salvador Dalí.) Eerie, modern music accompanies the sequences to sometimes startling effect. It is experimental because it exists in the realm of the abstract, the subconscious, and the imma- terial — areas traditionally confined to avant- garde film. Each dream sequence is unique, but some are more striking than others. The seven dreams, in order of appearance and their director, are as follows:

1. “Desire”— Max Ernst

2. “The Girl with the Prefabricated Heart”— Fernand Léger 3. “Ruth, Roses, and Revolvers”— Man Ray

4. “Discs”— Marcel Duchamp 5. “Ballet”— Alexander Calder 6. “Circus”— Alexander Calder 7. “Narcissus”— Hans Richter

Each dream is unique, and each is strange, surreal, or oddly affecting. The first concerns a bank clerk who watches a woman sleep; the second is about a woman who dreams she is a shop- window dummy who is pursued by a lovesick male mannequin; the third has a group of moviegoers in a theater who are instructed to mimic every action they see onscreen; the fourth follows a gangster who has poetic visions of a life outside of crime, but is really a filmed version of Duchamp’s infamous “roto- reliefs,” which become animated; Calder’s segments are similar since he animates his famous mobiles, first billiard balls, then circus animals; and the seventh dream, Richter’s own contribution, follows Joe, the dream provider, who turns blue and then proceeds to search for “himself ” now that he has become alienated as a form of himself. At one point he stops himself from committing a murder, tosses down a bloody knife, and then realizes the knife continuously produces more blood the more he tries to wash it. In another nod to surrealist forbearers, Joe stops passers- by, asking for help; one’s body opens to reveal a Magritte- like bird cage. Joe’s dream is a total nightmare. As the dream- instigator, he perhaps feels guilty for what he can do and does for others and their wish- fulfillments. In his dream, Joe passes through a mirror and into a world that reflects his own nightmarish life. According to Richard Suchenski,

Richter’s episode is the most allegorical and autobiographical.... With its soft color palette, expressive use of a subjective camera, deep- focus cinematography and enig- matic narrative, the “Narcissus” episode explicitly simulates the texture and flow of a dream, and it is unsurprising that Richter claims to have made it in a trance.26

Each of these segments has avant- garde motifs and techniques. For example, in Richter’s Joe inexplicably sits on a large cake of ice; in Duchamp’s there is a faint resemblance to his Nude Descending a Staircase, though now comprised of a prismatic focus and lumps of coal; and Léger’s has animated dolls, something very important to the development of surrealist stop- motion animation as prac- ticed by later filmmakers like Jan Svankmajer. The music for most segments also complements the avant- garde aesthetic of the entire film. Joe also fills his office with surrealist art and a large bust of Morpheus. I will briefly describe one dream in particular to highlight the film’s overall surrealistic and experimental nature. The first dream, Ernst’s “Desire,” is about a “methodical, exact” bank clerk accountant who reveals his inner sexual longings during his dream. His wife suggests to the artist/dream instigator (Joe) that she wants a dream for him “with practical values to widen his horizons, heighten ambitions, and maybe a raise in salary.” In true surrealist avant- garde fashion (and a direct credit to the creativity of Max Ernst), the man’s dream is a romantic, red- plushed reverie of desire, with motifs reminiscent of Ernst’s collage work. The dream begins after the clerk shows Joe some clippings he has put in a folder; they include a man with an animal head, a woman reclining on a bed, a woman sitting on a man’s lap, a red substance flowing with water, and a melting wax figure. Based on these, Joe conjures a dream. The dream contains people in classical costumes, a dense and painterly mise- en- scène, and a full chorus. Ernst himself plays a character named the President, who casts a watchful eye over the proceedings. The dream is completely surreal (and something David Lynch would be proud of ): Leaves fall beside a red curtain where a woman reclines on a red four- poster bed while a small golden ball rises and falls from her mouth as she breathes. At one point the red curtains mesh and become her red dress. She swallows the ball, smiles, and falls asleep. A man appears behind bars, watching her sleep. We see her dreams— of calf- footed nightingales— and the man tele- phones her to ask her what she is dreaming about. She drops the telephone, which falls to the floor in a plume of smoke that envelopes her bed. The hallu- cinatory atmosphere of this segment and its particular dense (and potentially symbolic) mise- en- scène have remained highly influential. As A.L. Rees asserts, “Ernst’s episode eroticizes the face and body in extreme close- up and rich color, looking ahead to toady’s ‘cinema of the body’ in experimental film and video.”27

This type of focus for more recent avant- garde films has a strong tradition in experiments like Richter’s Dreams That Money Can Buy.

Clearly, Ernst is visualizing one of his famous paintings (Girl Menaced by

a Nightingale), which suggests both Richter’s appreciation for others’ art and

film. In other words, each dream sequence stems from a historical and cultural grounding in 1920s Dada and surrealism. Richter was one of the founding mem- bers of the Zurich Dada, and his interest in abstract forms that can create dialec- tic interplay between shapes and emotions is also present in Dreams That Money

Can Buy. (Each dream sequence has objects that take on particular significance

when they are either used or animated.) But the film is more than an exercise in individual short films that can be read separately or concurrently; it also helped usher in the “acceptance” of new forms of film that would influence the longer formal exercises of the 1960s underground and the oneiric experimental films of contemporary avant- garde artists. In summing up the film and some of the sequences in it as influential to modern avant- garde cinema, Rees con- cludes, “Regarded at the time as ‘archaic,’ Dreams now seems uncannily pre- scient of a contemporary post-modernist sensibility. David Lynch selected extras from it, along with films by Vertov and Cocteau, for his 1986 BBC Arena film profile.”28_{Richter’s influence cannot be overestimated. His work in the}

1920s is still remarkably fresh, and his other feature-length avant- garde films (8 ¥ 8, 1957, and Dadascape, 1961) are just as intriguing as Dreams That Money

Can Buy. These features, and particularly Dreams That Money Can Buy,

“emphasized the revelatory potential of the irrational and the subconscious depths of the human psyche.”29 _{Many films can lay claim to portraying the}

inner life of people, but Richter’s accomplishment in this particular feature- length avant- garde film remains one of the best examples of the kind of cinema that has been co-opted by mainstream cinema. Dreams and dream- like worlds flourish in many contemporary films. But Dreams That Money Can Buy is unique because it is a realistic portrait of the oneiric. Given its historical setting, it is indeed way ahead of its time.