[Fictional film and the audience. A metapsychological study]

Comparing and contrasting dreams and films we find a complex behind of affinities and distinctions between the dream state and the film state. The author classifies the totality of these partial distinctions and similarities in terms of three factors deriving from the discrepancy between sleep and the waking state: first, the inconsistent knowledge of the subject with regard to what he is doing; second, the presence or absence of real perceptual material; and third, the qualitative difference between dream text and film text. Metz shows that, unlike dreams, which obey primary events, films have much greater affinities with secondary events and the pre-conscious figments of daydreaming. Dreams, the author contends, belong to childhood and night, while films and daydreams are more adult and belong to the day and the evening.