Oof now this was a disappointment! I'm not familiar with the source material, but I can only guess that Johannes Schaaf used it to shoehorn in a mocking scold to the New Left while also failing to live up to that enticing poster and Alfred Kubin's more surrealistic reputation. Whatever the case, it's facile, ugly, and a chore to stay invested in.

Ostensibly a plunge into the dangers lurking behind big promises, it sets up a magical-seeming Utopia somewhere off the map where artists are recruited to live and work as they see fit: no money, no job, all accommodations at their disposal. At its helm, a wet-looking monarch who's never seen, but intimately felt. All around, there's layers of…

Are you an artist? Are you feeling low and uninspired? Do you wish to get away from it all? Are you friends with Klaus Patera? If you answered yes to any or all of the above, we can help you! Yes, you! We will bring you through the deserts only to put you in a Mirror-Munich where all your desires will be catered for. Where the beer and wiener schnitzels never run out. A true Schlaraffenland.

This film is a strange mixture of the theatre of the absurd and another way of reporting on the human psyche once they are lured with promises that can become dangerous if left unchecked. It might seem random to some (and it can be…

In this Johannes Schaaf fantasy, reminiscent of Hungarian Miklos Jancso filmmaking style, a german artist couple are attracted by the awareness of the titular fictional place (I recognized a few Prague locations used for its setting) where they hope their lives could be better (they are coming from Munich). Soon the husband gets entangled in some bureaucratic rigmarole trying to become eligible for an audience pass to some theatrical shows, which seems to be the hip thing there. The couple finally gets access to a staged performance looking like some kind of hellish bedlam - I predicted at least one fully naked woman will show up in there, and got that right. The husband gets besotted by this very young…

One never quite knows what they're getting themselves into when they venture into the outsider 70's cinema of Eastern Europe. Films by the likes of Krystoff Zanussi or Miklos Jansco can be quite maddening, adventurous efforts. Well, the same can be said for Johannes Schaaf's "Dream City". Part horror movie, part apocalypse film but mostly just an angry allegory of man's inherent ability to destroy everything he touches, "Dream City" stars Per Oscarrson as a writer who receives an invitation from an old school friend to travel to his city where everyone lives in peace. The writer and his wife make the trip and end up in the dilapidated city where not everything is as peaceful as it seems.

"Dream…

Florian Sand (Per Oscarsson) and his wife Anna (Rosemarie Fendel) have arrived in a kind of ghost town with free spirits, a small community with its own rules that first promises good. Then it all goes downhill. Later when Anna becomes ill she is hung up in a tree, made into some sort of package.

"Dream City" is social criticism without enough drive. Instead, a long line of images are created to balance the lack of content. The less the drive, the more images - it seems. Orgies, snakes on chairs, illness, sex, manic laughter instead of a soundtrack, wigs and messy makeup and even messier intake of food. We see the freedom turning the society into a mob lynching…

Oof now this was a disappointment! I'm not familiar with the source material, but I can only guess that Johannes Schaaf used it to shoehorn in a mocking scold to the New Left while also failing to live up to that enticing poster and Alfred Kubin's more surrealistic reputation. Whatever the case, it's facile, ugly, and a chore to stay invested in.

Ostensibly a plunge into the dangers lurking behind big promises, it sets up a magical-seeming Utopia somewhere off the map where artists are recruited to live and work as they see fit: no money, no job, all accommodations at their disposal. At its helm, a wet-looking monarch who's never seen, but intimately felt. All around, there's layers of…

In this Johannes Schaaf fantasy, reminiscent of Hungarian Miklos Jancso filmmaking style, a german artist couple are attracted by the awareness of the titular fictional place (I recognized a few Prague locations used for its setting) where they hope their lives could be better (they are coming from Munich). Soon the husband gets entangled in some bureaucratic rigmarole trying to become eligible for an audience pass to some theatrical shows, which seems to be the hip thing there. The couple finally gets access to a staged performance looking like some kind of hellish bedlam - I predicted at least one fully naked woman will show up in there, and got that right. The husband gets besotted by this very young…

This was enjoyable but as the previous reviewers have mentioned it does trail off a lot. Since I am very familiar with the source material which is Kubin's The Other Side (if you are into Kafka and want to know where he got his Kafkaesque style from: this is required reading for you) I can appreciate the meandering style a bit. But I would've liked it more if the search for Partera as the founder of the city served more as a golden thread instead of appearing just here and there. So a lot of the film is more or less loosely connected and shows the peculiar lifestyle of the artist colony which makes watching it a bit tiresome.
But…

Are you an artist? Are you feeling low and uninspired? Do you wish to get away from it all? Are you friends with Klaus Patera? If you answered yes to any or all of the above, we can help you! Yes, you! We will bring you through the deserts only to put you in a Mirror-Munich where all your desires will be catered for. Where the beer and wiener schnitzels never run out. A true Schlaraffenland.

This film is a strange mixture of the theatre of the absurd and another way of reporting on the human psyche once they are lured with promises that can become dangerous if left unchecked. It might seem random to some (and it can be…