One of the most notable features of the film as a whole is the fact that no single character is focused upon for too long. Instead, the plot shifts from person to person, event to event with very insignificant connections between them. For example, early on in the film, the character who has been the major focus of attention visits a doctor to complain about rather bizarre dreams or hallucinations he had experienced the night before. Shortly after, the doctor's assistant nurse interrupts the meeting and informs the doctor that she must visit her sick father. The film then proceeds to follow the nurse's life for a time period, a seemingly random switch not common in most films. This switch, predictably surrounded by imagery that involves dreams and doctors, is most definitely a product of Sigmund Freud's theory of free association. The switch in plot focus may be considered a free association, while the nurse may be considered the superficial association, in Freudian terms.
The film also contains other scenes that call to mind Sigmund Freud's theories, at least indirectly through Andre Breton's influence. One of the most famous scenes in the film is a perfect example: a group of people gather around a dinner table, but instead of eating and drinking, the guests each begin to use the toilets that surround the table in place of chairs! The image is both surprising and disgusting. To complete the extraordinary scene, a man excuses himself from the table to privately have a meal in the eating room! The juxtaposition and reversal of these two activities is an attempt to cause the same alarm experienced in a bizarre dream. Andre Breton's influences (and therefore Freud's influences as well) are obvious, even 50 years after the publication of the first Surrealist Manifesto, and even in an entirely new medium of art: film.
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