I take it that in watching a film one is imaginatively presented with an as-if reality. In this talk I’d like to explore the idea that the mode of viewing a film is closely analogous to the imaginative mode of viewing a dream. I shall take up and extend Suzanne Langer’s suggestion in “A Note on the Film” that film is presented to the viewer in “the dream mode” by reflecting on the relation between dream and imagination as theorized by Bernard Williams (“Imagination and the Self”). I end with some tentative thoughts about why this connection between film and dream is important.
