Hans Richter, a German painter who began making experimental films in the twenties, created Dreams That Money Can Buy in his New York studio apartment, consciously recalling the Surrealists' concerns of the twenties. In his program note for the San Francisco "Art in Cinema" series, 1947, Richter describes his film: "The film tells the story of seven people in the office of a heavenly psychiatrist. He looks into their eyes and finds there on the inside of the retina the images of their dreams and wishes. They come to him to escape, for a short moment, the terrible struggle for survival which is breaking against the office door. They must go back finally-but with the satisfying doubt of whether the inner world is not just as REAL (and more satisfying) as the outer one. The visions seen in the 'inner eye' of these seven people are realized after suggestions, drawings, objects, (or, as in the case of Man Ray, after an original script) of six modern artists. They appear as compensations for the outer world in the eyes of the seven people..." The artists with whom Richter collaborated are Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Fernand Léger, and Man Ray.