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A strange attempt to bring the work of surrealist artists to a wider public. The plot is than an average Joe (Jack Bittner) can conjure up dreams that will improve peoples lives. This gives an excuse to view sequences created by several artists, most of whom were living in the US to avoid World War II.

Of most interest for those wishing to seeing the various artist's work, such as Alexander Calder' Circus being animated. I saw the Museum of Modern Art Print and the colors were in poor shape - the blue was almost gone.

Wow! For a film that was made in 1947, this was way ahead of it's time. 7 different surreal artists, including Duchamp; teamed up to create the dreams within the story. This is a rare film and if you can track down a copy, you won't be disappointed. The story is about a guy who starts a business selling people his dreams. People who need excitement come to him for a bizarre dream experience. Surreal images and at times crazy stream of conscious dialog follow. My favorite scene is later in the film, when the guy is walking up the ladder, and every time he takes a step, the step before disappears. Of course I wish the film would be remastered, since many of the scenes are faded. I'm glad to know that the British Film institute has it on video, I hope they digitally restore it and release it on DVD, or even better would be a Criterion release! 10/10

This is a great film for fans of the surrealist and dadaist movements and offers a lot of great moments by a wide range of talented artists, but it falls just short of the glory of what it could have been. The running time pushes the boundaries of what many of us, even fans of surrealism, can handle.

The film is a series of vignettes joined by a central story but on a whole it's not quite cohesive, and it's not even in-cohesive in an interesting way. All in all with the names involved, you just go in expecting more. It's a good little gem of experimental cinema but I was frankly wanting a little more...

The Avant Garde movement is not one that I follow, or know too much about, though I had seen some work by Duchamp at an exhibition in London once. However, I'll try very nearly anything and so when Dreams that Money Can Buy came up on Film 4 very late at night, I had to give it a go.

I could not find a separate listing as to which director did which part on the IMDb, but I have to say that I only really enjoyed two segments - Duchamp's 'Discs' and the last one, 'Narcissus' by Hans Richter. I really liked the geometric patterns and shadows of the masks and things in Duchamp's and the overall operatic, Gothic feel of Richter's, which had some great visual flair.

I persevered with the others and whilst I could see definite skill and talent in many pieces, they weren't really "me". My score is probably nearer the 5.5 mark than 6, but I'm rounding up slightly. Apologies to all who love this work, but with an alternative and rare film such as this, it's always going to divide opinion - and I did give it a go!

I had long been interested in watching this one (and had even toyed with the idea of acquiring its BFI PAL VHS in the mid-1990s) but, having now caught up with the film, I cannot say that the end result fully lived up to expectations!

It is quite a unique effort, mind you, but very uneven in tone – a reflection of the many 'cooks' involved in the 'broth' since, despite the overall credit to Richter, many another avant-garde artist was responsible for the various dream sequences that basically comprise the narrative (Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, Man Ray, etc.). This is also why I preceded its viewing with a number of shorts by all these exponents of experimental cinema and, for what it is worth, I opted to check the film out on the day of Richter's own birthday!

The concept is an intriguing, even noir-ish, one – accentuated by the initially down-on-his-luck protagonist and constant voice-over. The fantasies range from the romantic (a henpecked man braving a labyrinth for the sake of his idealized beloved recalls the work of Jean Cocteau) to the musical ('sung' by a mannequin and dreamt by a geeky girl liberated to femme fatale status by the hero's attentions), and from the prescient (the audience at an interactive movie theater imitate every move of the actors on-screen) to the insipid (a lazily derivative 'rotating shapes' display by Duchamp serving as the visions of a gangster type – who on earth but mathematicians dreams of such things anyway?!). The last hallucination, then, is reserved for the leading man himself – his assuming a blue countenance at this point presumably representing his own uniqueness (in view of the gift he is able to 'bestow' upon others).

As I said, this is more worth watching for its intentions than for what is ultimately achieved; the colour scheme, at least, makes it that more palatable to the adventurous movie-buff. Incidentally, we also have here one of the very earliest examples of a pre-credits sequence on celluloid.