Occasionally returning to the Vogel book – after the Nazi section I skipped, a “Secrets and Revelations” round-up of bonus films closes part two “The Subversion of Content.” This is what got me watching Salesman (“an inevitable indictment of the commercialization of religion”) and now this and the Herzog.

Different episodes corresponding to customers of a dream consultant. Restrained surrealism, attempts at dream logic, but the look and voices and pace are all off. I don’t think Americans in the 1940s were able to do dreaminess, with one big exception. Vogel calls it “ambitious,” and at least it’s that.

All dialogue dubbed, or rather narrated. Framing story of man-without-qualities Joe who opens a dream consulting business as an excuse to cram together dream imagery in a style I’d call Shabby Cocteau. Also full of poetry, but the basic kind that keeps rhyming art with heart. One episode is just spirograph animations. Four-ish minutes are devoted to shots of a mobile. I can’t slam the songs – “prefabricated heart” sung by a pair of mannequins was pretty good.