Surely everyone knows dreams like this; dreams in which you dream you wake up, get up and experience some very curious events, only to wake up afterwards?

Dreams like this happen to most of us very rarely. They happen to Herr Hoffmann so often, that he can't tell the difference between dream and reality any more.

When he finally mistakes reality for a dream he does things he wouldn't dream of doing normally. And while there is a moment of awakening from all this, in fact, too, this time it is the awakening of insight. Nothing can ever be the way it was.

Even if the events Hoffmann experienced in his last "dream" were, in fact, real, it is a reality which the author of the film has dreamt up for Hoffmann. After all, everything we see is a film. And the proximity of film to the magic of dreams is the secret sub-theme of this day-dream.