The Contest Dream

There was a contest involving a whole crowd of people. It was at college, but nowhere I’d ever been before. It involved travel, too – a bit like a treasure hunt – going to other countries. It was a very long and complicated dream but one part was this:
I was given a small brown ticket. On it was written the name of a film that I had to watch. There was a different film on every night and I wasn’t sure of the date. It was a short experimental film called La Bath Dernier – a classic black and white film in which a man sits fully-clothed in an old enamel bath. Under the bath is a gas ring which gradually heats the water.
So I went to the cinema but there was a different film on. The cinema was a corrugated hut, full of people talking in French. I sat back in my seat to watch. It was called Le Express. Another grainy black and white film by Alfred Hitchcock.
I didn’t really watch the film, though, because I was more interested in an exhibition of sets from the film. These consisted of small rooms with shelves full of objects. The doors were narrow and arranged in such a way that when the train passed you caught a very quick glimpse of the inside of the room.