Dream City

1973 ‘Traumstadt’ Directed by Johannes Schaaf

Bizarre Like Fellini. Surreal Like Bunuel. Explosive Like Cocteau.

A married couple of artists move to a utopian town known for its absolute freedom, but behind the surface perversion and violence are spreading.

Per Oscarsson Rosemarie Fendel Eva Maria Meineke Helen Vita Herbert Bötticher Alexander May Olimpia Heinrich Schweiger Ronnie Williams Louis Waldon Josef Hlinomaz Emil Iserle Suacina Krytenés Jan Kanyza Josef Kemr Lubomír Kostelka Johannes Schaaf Ota Sklenčka Václav Sloup

124 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by WraithApe ★★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Try to imagine The Prisoner, re-shot in Renaissance Germany with a script that plays out like a badly translated J.G. Ballard novel and you're half way to Dream City. Basically, I think it's supposed to be an allegory about how utopias always fail due to man's inherent vices, but this long film is so unfocused - and I'm not just talking about the camera work - it's hard to tell. The whole thing feels a bit like a Dadaist Happening.
Struggling artist Florian Sand is persuaded by a mysterious stranger to move from Munich to a town of perfect freedom, a city of unfettered dreams in the desert - bizarrely, a brick-for-brick recreation of a German town somewhere in the…
Review by Ryan McSwain ★★★★

Imagine Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner, only instead of an Orwellian Village, there exists a Kafkaesque hippie commune, a society founded upon the ideals forged during a late night of college freshmen getting plastered.
Dream City succeeds in everything it attempts, without any serious blunders. A lesser version of this film could have been goofy or—worse—boring. Unfortunately, pushing the envelope further might have made for a better film. A bit more poetry in the cinematography would have been welcome, especially with two hours to play with. A bit more tasteful lingering and a bit less pointless wandering would have been welcome.
Next time a creative type waxes poetic about a world of only artists, point them at this two-hour object lesson. Even the greatest artist needs someone to keep the hot water running.
Review by Soroush ★★½

تکنیک های فرمال شاف رو بخصوص در نیمه ابتدایی فیلم دوست داشتم. کات ها به وسط یک رویداد یا شرایط زده میشدن بدون این که ابتدا و پیش زمینه رو ببینیم که هم ما رو برای وضعیت پرآشوب و سورئال پیش رو آماده میکنه هم به فیلم سرعت می بخشه. فیلم ولی از مشکلات تماتیک زیادی رنج می بره. زن ها به موجودات ضعیف یا فاحشه تقلیل یافته بودن که مدام در حال خندیدن و جیغ زدن بودن. شخصیت های معقول همگی مرد بودن.جنبه ارینتالیسم فیلم هر چند کوچیک ولی زننده بود. هر چی دنیای عجیب و سورئال ابزورده باید در شرق باشه!! فیلم از میانه هم هر چقدر به انتها میره طراوتش رو از دست میده و کلیشه ای میشه. آخرش هم متوجه نشدیم مساله فیلم روانی و سایکولوژیکاله یا سیاسی؟
Review by Malvad ★★★★ 2

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…
Review by scottirvine ★½ 1

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…
Review by Videohuette

Ein surreales Kaleidoskop irgendwo zwischen Fellini und Buñuel. Eine Utopie, die zurecht mit Kafkas Erzählungen verglichen wird - das eigentliche Quellmaterial 'Die andere Seite' von Alfred Kubin ist mir zwar unbekannt, aber soll wohl einigermaßen adäquat umgesetzt sein. Wahrhaft märchenhaft wird uns die Gesellschaft vorgeführt, die an ihrer grenzenlosen Freiheit schließlich zu Grunde geht und dabei alles zwischen ihren Mühlrädern zerkleinert.

Recent reviews

Review by scottirvine ★½ 1

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…
Review by Videohuette

Ein surreales Kaleidoskop irgendwo zwischen Fellini und Buñuel. Eine Utopie, die zurecht mit Kafkas Erzählungen verglichen wird - das eigentliche Quellmaterial 'Die andere Seite' von Alfred Kubin ist mir zwar unbekannt, aber soll wohl einigermaßen adäquat umgesetzt sein. Wahrhaft märchenhaft wird uns die Gesellschaft vorgeführt, die an ihrer grenzenlosen Freiheit schließlich zu Grunde geht und dabei alles zwischen ihren Mühlrädern zerkleinert.
Review by Bsmith8168 ★★

German surrealist film that tries to be a lot of things it is not. What it is, is a story about a middle aged married couple that decides to move to a freedom heavy utopia that resembles Prague and ends up being corrupt and filled with equal amounts of perversity and violence. Overly long and doesn’t deliver when it comes to shock time and instead dries up, withers, and dies before anything of value develops.
Review by jimmymarkum ★★

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…
Review by Morpheus Lunae ★★★

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…
Review by Malvad ★★★★ 2

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…
Review by Rock Hyrax

It's really a shame this is such a confused jumble given just how good the Felix Kubin source novel and visual potential are here. Complete freedom, as for the residents of the Traumstadt, does not always result in something worthwhile or meaningful.
Review by Joshua Hext ★★½

The conceit is fantastic. The execution is wobbly.
Unfortunately, as many have said he the film feels unfocused. This leads to many scenes feeling extraneous but an almost equal amount feeling borderline iconic.
For instance, the scene in the theatre where there is no audience as everyone in the entire city is performing will stay with me perhaps forever. The surrounding film... Unfortunately... Won't.
Review by Ryan McSwain ★★★★

Imagine Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner, only instead of an Orwellian Village, there exists a Kafkaesque hippie commune, a society founded upon the ideals forged during a late night of college freshmen getting plastered.
Dream City succeeds in everything it attempts, without any serious blunders. A lesser version of this film could have been goofy or—worse—boring. Unfortunately, pushing the envelope further might have made for a better film. A bit more poetry in the cinematography would have been welcome, especially with two hours to play with. A bit more tasteful lingering and a bit less pointless wandering would have been welcome.
Next time a creative type waxes poetic about a world of only artists, point them at this two-hour object lesson. Even the greatest artist needs someone to keep the hot water running.