In film theory, the term oneiric (/oʊˈnaɪrɪk/; "pertaining to dreams") refers the depiction of dream-like states or to the use of the metaphor of a dream or the dream-state in analyzing a film. The phrase "dream factory" "has become a household expression for the film industry".
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History
Early film theorists such as Ricciotto Canudo (1879–1923) and Jean Epstein (1897–1953) argued that films had a dreamlike quality. Raymond Bellour and Guy Rosolato made psychoanalytical analogies between films and the dream state, and claimed that films have a "latent" content that can be psychoanalyzed as if it were a dream. Lydia Marinelli states that, before the 1930s, psychoanalysts "primarily attempted to apply the interpretative schemata found in Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams to films." More recently, Robert Eberwein has "cull[ed] dream scenes from the entirety of cinematic history" in an attempt to establish "the validity of psychoanalytic terminology in the form of a taxonomy."
Films and dreams are also connected in psychological analysis by examining the relationship between the cinema screening process and the spectator (who is perceived as passive). Roland Barthes, a French literary critic and semiotician, described film spectators as being in a "para-oneiric" state, feeling "sleepy and drowsy as if they had just woken up" when a film ends. Similarly, the French surrealist André Breton argues that film viewers enter a state between being "awake and falling asleep", what French filmmaker René Clair called a "dreamlike state". Edgar Morin's Le cinéma ou l'homme imaginaire (1956) and Jean Mitry's first volume of Esthétique et psychologie du cinéma (1963) also discuss the connection between films and the dream state.
Filmmakers
Filmmakers described as using oneiric or dreamlike elements in their films include Sergei Parajanov (e.g., Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors), David Lynch (e.g., Twin Peaks), Andrei Tarkovsky (e.g. Andrei Rublev and Solaris), Stan Brakhage (e.g., Dog Star Man), Michelangelo Antonioni (e.g. The Passenger), Jaromil Jires (e.g., Valerie and Her Week of Wonders), Krzysztof Kieslowski (e.g., The Double Life of Véronique), Federico Fellini (e.g., Amarcord), Ingmar Bergman (e.g., Wild Strawberries), Jean Cocteau (e.g., Orphic Trilogy), Maya Deren, Wojciech Has, and Kenneth Anger.