Oneiric (film theory)

In a film theory context, the term oneiric refers to the depiction of dream-like states in films, or to the use of the metaphor of a dream or the dream-state to analyze a film. The connection between dreams and films has been long established; "The dream factory" has become a household expression for the film industry.The dream metaphor for film viewing is “one of the most persistent metaphors in both classical and modern film theory and it is used by film theorists using Freudian, non-Freudian, and semiotic analytical frameworks.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. Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini argued that dreams carry messages using a common store of signs. 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” to establish “...the validity of psychoanalytic terminology in the form of a taxonomy.In a film theory context, the term oneiric refers to the depiction of dream-like states in films, or to the use of the metaphor of a dream or the dream-state to analyze a film. The connection between dreams and films has been long established; "The dream factory" “...has become a household expression for the film industry. The dream metaphor for film viewing is “one of the most persistent metaphors in both classical and modern film theory and it is used by film theorists using Freudian, non-Freudian, and semiotic analytical frameworks.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. Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini argued that dreams carry messages using a common store of signs. 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” to establish “...the validity of psychoanalytic terminology in the form of a taxonomy.Filmmakers noted for their use of oneiric or dreamlike elements in their films include Luis Buñuel, Wojciech Has,Sergei Parajanov, Ingmar Bergman, David Cronenberg, Alexander Dovzhenko, Andrei Tarkovsky, Lars von Trier, Krzysztof Kieslowski Carlos Atanes, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Sergio Leone , Orson Welles (particularly his adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Trial), and David Lynch. Film genres or styles noted for their use of oneiric elements include 1940s and 1950s film noir and surrealist films; moreover, oneiric elements have also been noted in musicals, thriller and horror films and in comic films such as Marx Brothers movies.