Sightlines · a concept

onirosign

the virtual as impersonal circuit (dream/fantasy/hallucination).

On screen: dream/fantasy circuits not tied to a localizable memory

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) — The twist reveals the entire inner narrative as the fantasy of an asylum patient — a dream circuit anchored to no localizable real memory
The Kid (1921) — The dream sequence redresses the same slum street as a heaven of white drapery and paper flowers with winged neighbors on suspension wires — a fantasy circuit tied to no memory, unable to imagine…
Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924) — Kriemhild's premonitory Falkentraum, realized by Walter Ruttmann as a stylized non-representational animated sequence
Sherlock Jr. (1924) — the projectionist dozes at his post and the dream becomes the license for the impossible composites — the sleeper's-dream frame borrowed from Dream of a Rarebit Fiend
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) — The superimposed pastoral vision in traffic and the ghostly visions of the Woman embracing the Man — multiple-exposure fantasy circuits untethered from any real location
Un Chien Andalou (1929) — Buñuel's stated method (per My Last Sigh) of keeping only irrational images; the intertitles 'Once upon a time,' 'Eight years later,' 'Sixteen years before' parody dated memory yet anchor nothing
Mädchen in Uniform (1931) — The superimposition sequence layering faces and imagery during Manuela's crisis, extending Weimar avant-garde optical subjectivity into a sound-era narrative.
The Blood of a Poet (1932) — The film proceeds by metamorphosis and repetition with no localizable memory or dreamer anchoring it; Cocteau called it the direct transcription of a poetic state
L'Atalante (1934) — Jean opens his eyes underwater and sees Juliette in her wedding dress drifting toward him — a vision tied to no datable memory, the technique reprised from Zéro de conduite's reversed-music reverie
Sabotage (1937) — At the London Zoo aquarium the tank glass becomes a screen on which Verloc watches the city dissolve — a fantasy circuit attached to no localizable memory.
The Wizard of Oz (1939) — The film's own framing device: Oz as a dream untethered to memory, in which the people of Dorothy's life return transfigured as Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion, Witch, and Wizard
The Thief of Bagdad (1940) — An Arabian Nights picaresque whose episodes 'operate more by wonder than by causality' — Djinni, carpet, six-armed automaton — fantasy circuits tied to no localizable memory.
High Sierra (1941) — The Goodhue farmhouse and the Indiana idyll are 'lit and dressed as a nostalgic dream he has no access to' — a fantasy of restoration attached to a life Roy never lived, collapsing when Velma rejects…
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) — The Halloween expedition — a child's-eye nocturne with genuine menace, not attributable to anyone's memory; the film enters Tootie's version of the world and stays there
The Woman in the Window (1944) — The ending reveals the entire ordeal as Wanley's dream in the club chair — a fantasy circuit anchored to no datable event, assembled out of the criminologist's own expertise (footprint, scratch…
Brief Encounter (1945) — The melodramatically lit fantasy inserts of the imagined life with Alec — desire dreaming itself, cut abruptly into the realist surface in the manner inherited from Murnau's Sunrise
Dead of Night (1945) — the final nightmare belongs to no datable memory; it is a circuit with no anchor in a former present
I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) — the night-train sequence dissolving into stylized reverie, Highlands and destiny 'fused in superimposition and pattern'
Spellbound (1945) — Dalí's dream sequence — painted eyes on curtains, giant scissors, faceless proprietor, sloping roof and wheel — a dream circuit decoded as clue rather than a localizable memory.
Beauty and the Beast (1946) — The Surrealist dream-logic of Un Chien Andalou, in which objects and bodies transform without causal explanation, is the grammar the living castle silently obeys — a virtual with no memory behind it.
Odd Man Out (1947) — Bubbles in spilled beer resolving into the faces of characters; portraits in the studio animating into a jury that tries him — circuits with no locatable memory behind them, built with period optical…
Drunken Angel (1948) — The beach sequence: Matsunaga prying open a coffin from which his own corpse emerges to pursue him, shot in manipulated motion and stark seaside light, in a register of pure expressionism unlike the…
The Young and the Damned (1950) — The slow-motion nightmare: the mother gliding forward with raw meat, the splattered lens — desire untethered from dateable memory
A Place in the Sun (1951) — The romantic montage interludes — faces dissolving into each other, time compressed by desire — and the soft-focus Taylor world rendered 'dreamlike and slightly unreal'
The Cranes Are Flying (1957) — The spinning birches dissolve into the imagined wedding Boris will never have — a fantasy circuit tied to no memory and no present, occupying the same instant as his death.
Wild Strawberries (1957) — The opening nightmare of the faceless figure, tipping hearse, and self-grasping corpse, untethered from any localizable memory
A Midsummer's Night Dream (1959) — The night forest where elves and nymphs enchant the Athenian couples — a fantasy circuit not anchored to any character's dated memory, and the register in which the movement of world operates.
Accattone (1961) — The set-piece dream/premonition sequence in which Accattone attends a vision of his own funeral, shaped in the cutting into the film's clearest intrusion of the sacred on the profane.
Divorce Italian Style (1961) — The murder daydreams — wife dispatched by quicksand, by rocket, by a bullet — staged in the same black-and-white with only dissolves, always punctured by the cut back to Fefè's deadpan face.
Through a Glass Darkly (1961) — Karin's final vision of the spider-god — a fantasy circuit answering to no memory or localizable cause, erupting into the mundane daylight footage; the cuts into and out of it feel violent.
West Side Story (1961) — The gel-lit fantasy passages and the bleaching of the world to isolate the lovers in the 'Somewhere' sequence
Ivan's Childhood (1962) — The recurring dream sequences — the well and the star, apples raining off the truck bed onto wet sand, the children in the rain — are unhooked from any datable memory and do not function as flashback…
The Manchurian Candidate (1962) — The nightmare sequences' abrupt cuts and temporal discontinuity, the garden party bleeding into the lecture hall — dream circuits not anchored to a localizable memory
8½ (1963) — The opening flight — Guido lifting through the car roof into the sky, then reeled back by a rope at his ankle — a fantasy circuit tied to no localizable memory
Billy Liar (1963) — The Ambrosia inserts — military reviews, balcony oratory, machine-gunning his enemies — are fantasy circuits tied to desire, not to any localizable memory.
Pale Flower (1964) — The heroin-observation sequence where camera and Takemitsu's score transform the scene into a hallucinatory vision that ruptures the film's surface realism, untethered from any localizable memory.
Juliet of the Spirits (1965) — Suzy's pleasure-villa — the slide into the pool, canopied beds, Art Nouveau/temple/baroque décor — is a fantasy circuit not tied to any localizable memory
Repulsion (1965) — The hallucination sequences — hands erupting from corridor walls, the cracking plaster, the landlord's advance as partial projection — fantasy circuits not anchored to verifiable reality
The Hero (1966) — The two hallucinatory dreams — 'Arindam adrift in a nightmarish landscape of money — mounds of banknotes, ringing telephones, grasping hands' — belong to no datable memory and arrive through the…
The Saragossa Manuscript (1966) — The Un Chien Andalou debt: non-causal image succession obeying dream-association rather than plot logic, never resolving into any character's retrievable memory
Funny Girl (1968) — The Follies numbers and the harbor finale as circuits that leave the dramatic scene for a world running on its own laws, tied to no localizable memory.
Rosemary's Baby (1968) — the dream-rape sequence — quick cuts, drifting superimposition, disorienting scale, 'this is no dream, this is really happening' — the one fantasy circuit unmoored from datable memory before style…
The Swimmer (1968) — the variable-speed photography of Ned's flight across the fields with young Julie Ann, slowed into 'the look of a memory rather than an event' and tied to no dateable past
Yellow Submarine (1968) — The psychedelic song interludes, freely morphing and decoupled from physical logic under the pressure of music, descending directly from 'Pink Elephants on Parade' in Dumbo — dream circuits tied to…
Midnight Cowboy (1969) — Florida rendered sunlit in advertising-bright color as Ratso's staged fantasy of escape, a dream circuit set against the gray vertical city.
Satyricon (1969) — the film aspires to a dream remembered imperfectly — impossible below-source lighting, amber estrangement, dream logic rather than physical law, untethered from any localizable memory
Sweet Charity (1969) — “If My Friends Could See Me Now” — Charity alone in a movie star's apartment, given Breathless-derived jump cuts and freeze-frames — treats the number as mental space rather than staged event, the…
Tristana (1970) — The bell-clapper vision and the film's other dream inserts arrive with no transitional signaling and are never anchored to a datable memory; the film simply continues.
The Beguiled (1971) — Pingitore intercuts fantasy, memory and flashback into the present tense without conventional signposting — Edwina's desire and Carol's calculation surfacing as brief unmarked inserts.
The Decameron (1971) — The painter's vision, where the cutting leaves the film's demotic rhythm for a slow tableau mode, Silvana Mangano appearing as the Madonna, image succeeding image like a fresco cycle read wall by…
Wake in Fright (1971) — The climactic breakdown after the hunt and the night at Doc Tydon's dissolves into superimposed fragments, abandoning narrative legibility for a delirium anchored to no datable memory.
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) — The tunnel sequence — shock inserts (centipede, eye-crawl, chicken decapitation) cut over Wonka's reciting face with the warping boat theme, delivering no narrative information, functioning as…
Amarcord (1973) — The Rex looming out of the fog 'like a hallucination,' the peacock opening in winter snow, Uncle Teo in the tree — fantasy circuits untethered from any localizable memory.
Day for Night (1973) — The recurring black-and-white dream of a boy tapping down a night street with a cane to a shuttered cinema, doled out in fragments and resolved late as the theft of the Citizen Kane lobby cards — a…
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) — The hallucinatory vision sequences where the camera loosens into something liquid and unstable, registering subjective rupture without explanation or localizable memory
The Phantom of Liberty (1974) — The bedroom procession — rooster, postman with a letter, ostrich, bell-ringing figure — belongs to no localizable memory and is given no optical marker distinguishing it from waking.
Face to Face (1976) — The extended post-overdose zone of dream, memory and hallucinated confrontation with the dead and the buried — coffins, burning, figures from Jenny's past — staged through colour and editing rather…
3 Women (1977) — The film originated in an actual dream of Altman's and moves by association; following the Belle de Jour debt, it inserts the nocturnal pool visions with no optical demarcation from Pinky's waking…
Cross of Iron (1977) — After Steiner is wounded the film moves into fevered, hallucinatory montage that dissolves the boundary between memory, delirium and present action.
Eraserhead (1977) — The Lady in the Radiator sequences — a fantasy circuit on a pocket stage, not a localizable memory or flashback; transitions follow dream logic inherited from Un Chien Andalou.