An important film…

This film is one of those fact based films that gets turned into a myth by film makers…

…I did view this film and understand perfectly what it is dramatizing as I have experienced it myself.  Therefore one can conclude some films do intend educating the public.  The subjects of the film lose sight of their reality hunt, with a surprise ending inserted into their reality, that would shock most viewers unfamiliar with sci-fi crime films.  Because of the shock effect, viewers would hardly entertain any other reality about this film, thus their truth is lost.

There are sleeping issues in this film.

Taylor and Rorke, who I am familiar with from I dream of Jeanie, are very good in this film but Stanwyck makes several obvious flub ups I attribute to misdirection.  One case in which it is obvious the director tells her to look up at the camera at the wrong time and she seems to have jumped the gun when responding to Hudson’s character in the film.   It also appeared there was intent on selling the public on electric percolators, so the sleeper might have been viewing an ad for an electric percolator which may have attributed to Stanwyck’s error.   These ads were popular in the 60’s with a woman dressed in a full skirt, tight fitting blouse and glaring look and wide smile.  If I had not experienced this for myself in my sleep and during my waking hours, I would never have deduced this information from this film.

Proxies for Reality

Another highly underrated and very talented actress, Marla Gibbs…

Losing Chase

I am sure there are those who love to be seduced and would rather romanticize a serious subject as this one.  Cinematically it is a work of art and the acting is well done.  Otherwise, the story misleads in my opinion.  It misguides the viewer by calling it a lesbian film leading one to think the film is about a lonely desperate housewife who’s self absorbed business oriented husband forces her to seek solace in a mentally and emotionally abandoned college student whose mother also happens to be mentally ill.  It is about mental illness and poor thinking on the part of Chase, Richard and the boys.  It is about recovering from mental illness to some degree but we don’t see this process at all.  We do see a young naive and confused caretaker who is in over her head with an adult woman who isn’t sure of her own sexual preference or is androgynous and unafraid to express the male tendencies, though kissing between parent and child is not unusual and is often part of the bonding between parent and child.  Is Chase merely re-enacting onto Elizabeth what her husband did to her or is she re-enacting what one of her parents did to her?  It borders on child molestation to me, although nothing sexual happens between them but is strongly alluded to and even misperceived by Chase’s oldest son.  Was Chase molested?   Was Elizabeth being molested?  It is clear Elizabeth was in desperate need of parenting since her ill mother was mentally unable to fulfill this need.   Isn’t Elizabeth really developmentally disabled?  Yes.  I would say she is to a degree, depending on details of her own mother’s onset of illness.  To romanticize and misconstrue such desperate needs by a young college student and an adult woman fails the intelligence of the viewing public in my opinion.  It is clear Elizabeth is unconsciously attracted to mentally ill people because of her attachment to her own mother who was unable to provide proper parenting.  We aren’t sure by the end of the film whether she gains awareness of her own tendencies.  Elizabeth is reenacting a life pattern created by something outside both her and her mother.  How can that be romantic?   Does Chase set her up for more mental illness?   Clearly the writer knows nothing about mental illness nor child development.  The film’s negatives outweigh the positives.

This is a good series, really good acting.

I was reading The Psychology of the Transference last night. I related something I read to this segment of this episode.  I have not been seeing this program.  I stumbled onto one of the videos which seemed familiar to me, I checked it out.

In Jung’s Psychology of the Transference, Jung talks about the weakening of consciousness and a sudden loss of initiative.  This gives rise to unconscious content which manifests itself as compulsions like overeating, overworking, obsessions.  He goes on to say that in dealing with the unconscious and in order to protect his weakening consciousness, fear of insanity, the patient needs an island.  In the scene below Rizzoli’s mother is found in her apartment painting the walls without Rizzoli’s permission.   Rizzoli confronts her about this.   This gives her mother an opportunity to vent her anger and make Rizzoli feel guilty about being born, “I got stretch marks for you missy”.   This feeds Rizzoli’s obsessive need to fix things, overwork and find killers.  She’s looking a killer in the face, but is afraid to confront her about what she is doing, 

Some of the dialogue is a little treacherous but all in all it is a good show.

Lilith, 1964

I was attracted to this film recently after discovering dialogue regarding schizophrenics, I thought was a bit prejudiced.   Having been diagnosed with schizophrenia I never believed I had, I set out to discover the nature of my diagnoses.  Since that time I have uncovered numerous films and books at the root of most of my problems and nothing innately wrong with me, in fact I never had a chance to even develop a normal personality that wasn’t contaminated with films mostly due to hypnotic suggestions employed by numerous film makers in the 1940’s and 1950’s.  I recently discovered this film as being part of the cause for my diagnoses in 1991. 

This was a skillfully created film and as skillfully acted.  The characters were not quite as convincing as in other films like Girl Interrupted but they were keenly portrayed with a focus on the transactions between the patients and Vincent.  Vincent does seem the focus of the film rather than Lilith.   The film claims to be about a mentally ill woman named Lilith who is schizophrenic.  She is portrayed as gifted and highly intelligent but frequently drifts into these periods of delusion as if she is living in another place and time, the players showing up from time to time.  Vincent does appear as her inept caretaker.  Lilith seems to have a fixation on water I interpreted as part of her birth peri-natal matrix and the source of her happiness.  Numerous scenes of a waterfall and rushing water are symbolic of the beginnings of birth.   She’s an adult still possessed of infantile qualities.   I interpreted the scene in which Stephen nearly falls into the raging water, as Lilith innocently but recklessly wanting Stephen to experience what she was feeling within herself, being free from the dark depressing confines of the womb. 

The three, Lilith, Vincent and Stephen form a triangle as does Vincent and the two psychiatrists.   As the story progresses he seems to fall in love with Lilith knowing Stephen has feelings for her too, discrediting Stephen as a viable suitor for her.  I see Vincent as a victim of Stephen’s transferences and his affections for Lilith which Vincent acts out with Lilith and Lilith confuses with her brother.  He becomes so entangled with Lilith, blaming her condition rather than his incapacity to manage the emotional states of both Stephen and Lilith, he is unable to separate Stephen’s feelings from his own.   Vincent crosses the line and becomes sexually involved with Lilith.  She seems to possess a sexual freedom difficult for Vincent to understand and he finds himself in another triangle, a sexual one, now wanting to isolate Lilith from Stephen and Yvonne, taking her on various outings alone.  At a point in the film her behavior leads one to think she is a pedophile as her behavior is clearly inappropriate.  Lilith is being abused and so I would surmise they have re-enacted something of Lilith’s past? Thinking he is falling deeper in love with Lilith he returns a gift Stephen made and gave to Lilith, a box for her pastels.   Stephen, unable to bare what he thinks is a rejection, kills himself.  This sends Vincent fleeing to Lilith for comfort she is unable to give and she too becomes distraught and falls into a depressed state.   At the end of the film we see Vincent heading towards Lilith’s room and there he finds it destroyed by her rage.  Lilith has regressed to a more primitive state of existence and is in isolation, likely where part of her life began after birth, an incubator.   

At a point in the film I began to see Vincent as the patient and clearly the mentally ill person, Lilith having been his caretaker.    It is hard to tell until the end of the film he is the real patient but everything seemed to be going in reverse, as in the film Suspect. 

Someone Behind the Door

The Sleeping Tiger, classic psychoanalysis…

The films opens with Mrs. Esmond coming home, finding Frank Clemmons seated in the living room reading a book.  Frank Clemmons has been given a reprieve from prison in lieu of staying with Dr. Esmond and his wife Glenda, for 6 months upon the recommendation of Dr. Esmond, in hopes of curing the habitual felon; the repetition compulsion.  Clemmons looks at Mrs. Esmond with child like sexual interest, the transference, while Mrs. Esmond passes a sardonic look toward Frank, oppressing any relief from his depressed state, making him angry, the counter-transference induction or grafting (Heinrich Racker, chapter, The Counter-transference Neurosis), which he later acts out on the maid while she is cleaning up, tripping her and causing her to fall. The benefits of Mrs. Edmonds’ counter-transference is not immediately evident although it has its advantages as Frank introjects these traits onto himself. Or, is Frank simply recovering his own attitude towards the Establishment and upper class society?

The film is a classic example of the Oedipus Complex with a twist, the way I see it.   Dr. Esmond and Clemmons begin to delve into Frank’s past uncovering piece by piece the cause of Frank’s criminal behavior.   Though, in this story, during the course of Clemmons’ treatment he confronts Mrs. Esmond about her own past which had little difference to Frank’s. She is quick to point out she refused to let her past affect her future, unlike Frank who appeared to be letting his past ruin his life. She is still projecting her own self loathing onto Clemmons, as she is in an unhappy marriage and begins to identify more with Frank, his lifestyle and the people with whom he associates finding her current marriage to be boring and less than she had dreamed it might be, her husband often treating her like his daughter.  This is the counter-transference on Frank’s part as he was apt to deduce her disgust with him had been with herself and her present situation.   Frank, who now refers to Mrs. Esmond as Glenda, seems to fall in love with Mrs. Esmond and Mrs. Esmond with him, compensating for a lack of affection in both their lives and is at first like a mother-son relationship.  They seem to ineptly struggle with each other enmeshed in their depressions and self loathing, both sinking further into emotional and psychological depravity. They arrange various encounters kept secret from Dr. Esmond. In the realm of psychoanalysis this is an unhealthy sexual bonding called sexual acting out. In psychotherapeutic treatment it can cause serious damage to the patient’s mental health, Heinrich Racker, Transference and Countertransference, page 144, Use of Countertransference and Transference.  This continues even after Dr. Esmond walks in on a scene in the kitchen where Mrs. Esmond is preparing dinner. 

Dr. Esmond refuses to dismiss Frank from his home and after Clemmons commits a robbery, he takes sides with Frank in an attempt to win Frank’s confidence and prevents the police from searching his home where Frank has hidden stolen money. This event triggered a breakthrough in Clemmons’ analysis after which Dr. Esmond and Frank take a two day fishing trip. Frank, having faced the destructive impulses ruling his thinking and behavior, is free and wants to move on with his life, trying to end his entanglement with Mrs. Esmond, now suffering from her own mental and emotional problems. She goes to extremes by biting herself claiming Clemmons assaulted her in an attempt to prevent Frank from leaving. Frank was giving her what her husband did not, because of her husband’s own problems and his commitment to Frank, who, at one point, begins to confront this when he offered to take Mrs. Esmond on a long vacation.

After Dr. Esmond reported to his wife that Frank was gone, she leaves the house in a frenzied mental state and races down the road where she picks up Frank and they speed off. Frank tries to console her and reason with her. Now, herself in the throes of a depressed state, unable to cope with her own deprivation and wanting to hold onto the one thing she believes is giving her life back to her, she speeds toward an oncoming truck. Frank grabs the wheel and they crash through a sign. Frank survives the crash, Mrs. Esmond appears to have lost her life at the scene.

Taking the story one step further it was evident to me, Mrs. Esmond may have been the true cause of Frank Clemmons’ problems all along and through synchronicity, he found his way into her home for psychotherapy. It also seems possible Dr, Esmond, already aware of his wife’s mental instability, sought out the help of a resident student to assist him with his wife’s therapy or the good Doctor found a way to manipulate her demise, deluding both her and his patient. There are a few allusions to it but the film fails to expound on this part of the story.

Seems it could be related to Someone Behind the Door.

 

 

Atonement (2007) - Official Trailer - YouTube

I thought this was an excellent film.  Most interesting story.

Watch the new SALT trailer, starring Angelina Jolie - YouTube

Great acting in this film Jolie is clearly in her element.  Lots of action and very little dialogue.  I liked it more than most films of its kind.  Editing was excellent in my opinion and well directed.  Everything Salt did just seemed to flow effortlessly.  Just a well done film.

The Night Porter Psychological Analysis…

This was a powerful film with brilliant performances by both Rampling and Bogarde in a dark and deadly dance of sado-masochism.  Thanks to their courage in tackling these roles many of us have been saved from its powerful grip.

Night Porter is about Max, a sadistic, mentally disturbed Nazi Soldier awaiting trial for his atrocities during the holocaust while working as a night porter in a hotel. During the holocaust he commits heinous abuses upon Lucia, an it girl, during her captivity. He torments the girl, yet makes her believe he is her protector, at one point, after a performance before many SS soldiers, displaying the head of one of the male inmates in a box. He does this in an attempt to bind her to him while keeping her in fear for her own head, a story he later claims to be Biblical, but I viewed as his own vindictive, artistic interpretation of Holofernes, clearly in which he seems to be taking vengeance on seductive women. One might think his childhood interpretation of this event deserved rectifying by abusing seductive women and could be related to Hitler and his personal interpretation of this event in the Bible. Fairbairn states with regard to similar circumstances, “the badness of an object was not the child’s sadism but was a reflection of maternal deprivation.” His instincts have been perverted so as to cause him to desire such relationships in order to satisfy his sexual needs. Fairbairn states, “what ranked as crucial for the child was the establishment of a satisfactory object relationship during the period of infantile dependence”.

With this in mind, it becomes clear they are both victims of unfulfilled infantile desires and positive parental deprivation, Lucia’s deprivation having been created for his purposes in his god-like conception of himself. The behavior acted upon Lucia is part of the “traumatic bonding”, defined in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a Clinical Review, Sidran Press and is described in the Stockholm Syndrome. At some point Max and Lucia part, never to see each other again until she arrives at the hotel with her husband, where Max happens to be employed.

His atrocities upon her pervert her natural childhood instincts, replacing her parental attachments and creating in her a masochistic dependency, frequently inflicting his own sadistic behaviors onto her, later dissociated from her consciousness until she encounters him at the hotel. During her imprisonment, it is clear she was fixated on him and his abuse of her, why she has arrived at the very hotel where he is working. This happens, in part, because of their sick attachment, their initial involvement being what Jung called synchronicity. This is also dramatized in Death in Love, when the Doctor appears in the city where his victim lives. Lucia is like the mother in Death In Love only she does not have children on which she inflicts her trauma, she seeks to inflict it on her tormentor, Max. Again Fairbairn remarks that a healthy object (meaning caretakers) relationship is critical during the period of infantile dependence.

The encounter triggers her memories of the events that occurred between them during her captivity, as well as Max’s, called flashbacks. Their relationship is reignited with numerous scenes dramatizing their relationship during Lucia’s captivity, their libidinal energies now driven by the need for violence; suffering and pain. In one scene, we see her clearly exhibit sadistic behaviors, Lucia acting the loving obedient but flirtatious child, deliberately smashing a bottle onto the floor of the bathroom after locking the door. Upon unlocking the door, Max bursts through stepping onto the glass cutting his foot. Lucia then reaches under his foot at which time he crushes her hand into the glass, again inflicting sadistic harm upon his “little girl”. Here, from my own synchronistic observations, I recognize scenes from The Woman In Green in which a long needle is driven into the hand of a stage performer in order to demonstrate hypnosis, I later re-enacted by stepping onto a nail in a board while crossing a creek.

This is the nature of their bond with each other now, she as an adult woman and he as a civilian. Now he wants to love her as a man would love a woman but their affair is more or less a kind of sadistic play between each other, Lucia manifesting her childish masochistic flirtations, setting off Max’s sadistic desires he attempts to control. In hopes of changing her and saving her he keeps her locked up in his apartment at one point chaining her to a chest claiming he is keeping “them” from taking her. He also wants to prevent her from testifying against him which she has threatened to do. He provides her medical treatment she refuses claiming there is no cure, also intimating her reasons for her appearance at the hotel is more than chance.

The ending is climatic as the two sink further into depravity, still inflicting pain one on the other, acting like animals, he caressing her mouth as if to caress and care for her vagina which gives him pleasure, but wanting to cut out of her vagina that which makes her seductive and wanted by others. Both, on the verge of starvation, in an attempt to prevent Lucia from being taken into custody and Max arrested for his crimes, they leave the re-creation of their prison, the apartment, and take their final steps to freedom. Shots are fired, both falling to their death.

12 Monkeys Trailer - YouTube

 

Altered States Trailer - YouTube

 

Helen Mirren in Teaching Mrs. Tingle - YouTube

 

Helen Mirren- The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone - YouTube