The Dream
About The Dream
A husband eats with another woman, finishes a bottle, and pays from a thick roll of bills. His wife waits at home and watches the clock. He comes back drunk, knocks over dishes and a chair, and drops onto the sofa. She leaves the room. He dreams she returns in a tight dress and a plumed hat, drinks his wine, drop-kicks a plate, blows smoke in his face, and goes off with a well-dressed man. He follows them to the restaurant where he had been earlier, then wakes on the floor. She comes in in her ordinary clothes. He tears up his address book. They sit down to eat.
Cast & crew
More about The Dream
Thomas H. Ince and George Loane Tucker directed the one-reel IMP short. Herbert Brenon wrote it. Carl Laemmle produced it. Tony Gaudio photographed it. Mary Pickford and her husband Owen Moore star, after they had left Biograph. Lottie Pickford plays Bess, the typewriter. A listed running time is 11 minutes. A print is at the Library of Congress. Milestone Films included it on the DVD of Pickford's Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley (1918).
Themes
Making
IMP uses the dream so Pickford can play the patient wife and then the wife who copies her husband's night out, down to the same restaurant.
Look
Tony Gaudio shot the restaurant, the waiting dinner, and the dream in which the wife repeats the husband's gestures.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
A print is at the Library of Congress. Milestone Films included the short on its DVD of Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley.
Notes
- Charles Arling is billed in some listings as the dream man. William Robert Daly and J. Farrell MacDonald have uncredited parts.
- In the dream Pickford drop-kicks a plate and pulls down the door curtains before she leaves.
- Moore pays the restaurant check from a roll of bills. At home he shreds an address book.
- The short is one of the few surviving pictures from Pickford's IMP year.
- The Milestone DVD that carries it is the edition of Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley.
Scenes
- The other woman kicks his hat out of his hands as they leave the restaurant.
- In the dream, the wife drop-kicks a plate and blows smoke in his face.
- Awake, he tears the address book while she brings dessert.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (The Dream (1911) .webm)
- Milestone Films DVD of Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley
