Downloaded from http://mh.bmj.com/ on April 12, 2015 - Published by group.bmj.com
Reviews
Secrets—and lies? The seventh European Psychoanalytic Film Festival The Seventh biannual European Psychoanalytic Film Festival took place in London from 31 October to 3 November 2013, with a programme dedicated to the theme of Secrets. The organisers’ careful selection of films and accompanying discussions brought together filmmakers, psychoanalysts and scholars from several European countries. The first day saw the presentation of the Austrian film Atmen [Breathing] (2011), directed by the acclaimed actor Karl Markovics. The film depicts in the bleakest of ways the fate of a young convict trying to find his way back into society. His path leads him and the audience to an agonising encounter with the banality of death, its repression and surrounding taboos. Mainly set in Vienna, the world depicted by Markovics seems to have very little in common with the salons of fin-de-siècle Vienna and their attendant maladies; and one cannot help asking oneself how Freud and his bourgeois clientele of neurotic patients have any relevance to the hopeless people at the lower end of today’s society. In contrast to Freud, his influential teacher Martin Charcot did show an interest in the fate of the less affluent. The film Augustine (2012) by the French filmmaker Med Humanit June 2014 Vol 40 No 1
69
Downloaded from http://mh.bmj.com/ on April 12, 2015 - Published by group.bmj.com
Reviews Alice Winocour provides a fascinating portrait of the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital and Charcot’s role there. Those of his female patients that were diagnosed with hysteria, coming from lower social classes —such as the eponymous Augustine— aspired to rise to fame as model patients of the professor. The circle of hypnosis and suggestibility involved in Charcot’s treatment has been a focus of criticism ever since the contemporaneous days of the rival Nancy school. The film deserves credit for demonstrating this problematic aspect of Charcot’s treatment of hysteria with hypnosis. But films such as Winocour’s have their own problematic aspect, namely, the uncritical vacillation between historical facts and fiction. As her film focuses on the personal relationship between Charcot and Augustine, it is understandable that Winocour touches on the question of sexuality, so intricately linked with the diagnosis and history of hysteria; but does it legitimate her maintaining that there was a sexual affair between Charcot and his patient? The discussion after the viewing of the film made it quite clear that even an informed audience could not tell if this affair was real or the director’s fantasy. One does not have to invoke Jean Baudrillard’s concepts of the simulacrum and hyper-reality to understand the awkward implications of such an approach: a fiction becomes reality through the power of the medium of film. As if to prove the point, the short presentation by the British psychoanalyst Ronald Britton following the screening opened with a comparison to the ‘affair’ between C.G. Jung and Sabina Spielrein, as depicted in the 2011 film A Dangerous Method. As no one in the audience or the panel contradicted this statement, one has to assume that due to David Cronenberg and John Kerr (the director of A Dangerous Method and its source book’s author, respectively) a simulacrum—a fictional symbolic representation —has already become reality. Thus let me remind you that there is no proof for this alleged affair—nor for one between Charcot and Augustine. The appearance of Hungarian director István Szabó promised to be a highlight of the festival. Szabó’s uncompromising exposure of the collaborator in totalitarian regimes, so powerfully executed in films such as Mephisto (1981) or Taking Sides (2001), seemed to be discredited when it was revealed that he had been an informant for the Secret Police in the late 1950s. Szabó has not shied away from talking about his past and would have certainly contributed well to the overall topic of Secrets, but to everyone’s disappointment 70
he had to withdraw at the last minute. However, the chosen film, Bizalom [Confidence] (1997), spoke for its director and did not need any commentary. Set in World War II, it tells the story of a man and a woman, previously unknown to one another, hiding from the Nazis in Budapest. While they pretend to live as a married couple, they fall in love with each other; but mistrust permeates every moment of their life and togetherness. The film ends when Hungary is liberated: the couple lose sight of each other in the chaos; and, thus without papers, the woman—who so narrowly escaped death by the Nazis—cannot prove her identity and trustworthiness to the new authorities. Szabó poses the question whether the new regime, represented by the now-beloved man from whom she has been separated, has lost its faith in humanity during the years of suffering or whether mankind can redeem itself and rebuild human values. This most impressive film and the powerful message it conveys seemed more than sufficient to answer for Szabó’s past. All of the films screened at this edition of the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival posed difficult questions about the human condition and its secret, usually darker, side; and each would be worthy of more detailed examination. But that’s a successful festival’s paradoxical pleasure: the more good films that are on offer, the less time there is to devote to any one of them! Martin Liebscher Correspondence to Dr Martin Liebscher, Department of German, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK; [email protected] Competing interests None. Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
To cite Liebscher M. Med Humanit 2014;40:69–70. Published Online First 25 February 2014 Med Humanit 2014;40:69–70. doi:10.1136/medhum-2014-010497
Med Humanit June 2014 Vol 40 No 1
Downloaded from http://mh.bmj.com/ on April 12, 2015 - Published by group.bmj.com
Secrets−−and lies? The seventh European Psychoanalytic Film Festival Martin Liebscher Med Humanities 2014 40: 69-70 originally published online February 25, 2014
doi: 10.1136/medhum-2014-010497 Updated information and services can be found at: http://mh.bmj.com/content/40/1/69.2
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To request permissions go to: http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions To order reprints go to: http://journals.bmj.com/cgi/reprintform To subscribe to BMJ go to: http://group.bmj.com/subscribe/
Reviews
Secrets—and lies? The seventh European Psychoanalytic Film Festival The Seventh biannual European Psychoanalytic Film Festival took place in London from 31 October to 3 November 2013, with a programme dedicated to the theme of Secrets. The organisers’ careful selection of films and accompanying discussions brought together filmmakers, psychoanalysts and scholars from several European countries. The first day saw the presentation of the Austrian film Atmen [Breathing] (2011), directed by the acclaimed actor Karl Markovics. The film depicts in the bleakest of ways the fate of a young convict trying to find his way back into society. His path leads him and the audience to an agonising encounter with the banality of death, its repression and surrounding taboos. Mainly set in Vienna, the world depicted by Markovics seems to have very little in common with the salons of fin-de-siècle Vienna and their attendant maladies; and one cannot help asking oneself how Freud and his bourgeois clientele of neurotic patients have any relevance to the hopeless people at the lower end of today’s society. In contrast to Freud, his influential teacher Martin Charcot did show an interest in the fate of the less affluent. The film Augustine (2012) by the French filmmaker Med Humanit June 2014 Vol 40 No 1
69
Downloaded from http://mh.bmj.com/ on April 12, 2015 - Published by group.bmj.com
Reviews Alice Winocour provides a fascinating portrait of the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital and Charcot’s role there. Those of his female patients that were diagnosed with hysteria, coming from lower social classes —such as the eponymous Augustine— aspired to rise to fame as model patients of the professor. The circle of hypnosis and suggestibility involved in Charcot’s treatment has been a focus of criticism ever since the contemporaneous days of the rival Nancy school. The film deserves credit for demonstrating this problematic aspect of Charcot’s treatment of hysteria with hypnosis. But films such as Winocour’s have their own problematic aspect, namely, the uncritical vacillation between historical facts and fiction. As her film focuses on the personal relationship between Charcot and Augustine, it is understandable that Winocour touches on the question of sexuality, so intricately linked with the diagnosis and history of hysteria; but does it legitimate her maintaining that there was a sexual affair between Charcot and his patient? The discussion after the viewing of the film made it quite clear that even an informed audience could not tell if this affair was real or the director’s fantasy. One does not have to invoke Jean Baudrillard’s concepts of the simulacrum and hyper-reality to understand the awkward implications of such an approach: a fiction becomes reality through the power of the medium of film. As if to prove the point, the short presentation by the British psychoanalyst Ronald Britton following the screening opened with a comparison to the ‘affair’ between C.G. Jung and Sabina Spielrein, as depicted in the 2011 film A Dangerous Method. As no one in the audience or the panel contradicted this statement, one has to assume that due to David Cronenberg and John Kerr (the director of A Dangerous Method and its source book’s author, respectively) a simulacrum—a fictional symbolic representation —has already become reality. Thus let me remind you that there is no proof for this alleged affair—nor for one between Charcot and Augustine. The appearance of Hungarian director István Szabó promised to be a highlight of the festival. Szabó’s uncompromising exposure of the collaborator in totalitarian regimes, so powerfully executed in films such as Mephisto (1981) or Taking Sides (2001), seemed to be discredited when it was revealed that he had been an informant for the Secret Police in the late 1950s. Szabó has not shied away from talking about his past and would have certainly contributed well to the overall topic of Secrets, but to everyone’s disappointment 70
he had to withdraw at the last minute. However, the chosen film, Bizalom [Confidence] (1997), spoke for its director and did not need any commentary. Set in World War II, it tells the story of a man and a woman, previously unknown to one another, hiding from the Nazis in Budapest. While they pretend to live as a married couple, they fall in love with each other; but mistrust permeates every moment of their life and togetherness. The film ends when Hungary is liberated: the couple lose sight of each other in the chaos; and, thus without papers, the woman—who so narrowly escaped death by the Nazis—cannot prove her identity and trustworthiness to the new authorities. Szabó poses the question whether the new regime, represented by the now-beloved man from whom she has been separated, has lost its faith in humanity during the years of suffering or whether mankind can redeem itself and rebuild human values. This most impressive film and the powerful message it conveys seemed more than sufficient to answer for Szabó’s past. All of the films screened at this edition of the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival posed difficult questions about the human condition and its secret, usually darker, side; and each would be worthy of more detailed examination. But that’s a successful festival’s paradoxical pleasure: the more good films that are on offer, the less time there is to devote to any one of them! Martin Liebscher Correspondence to Dr Martin Liebscher, Department of German, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK; [email protected] Competing interests None. Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
To cite Liebscher M. Med Humanit 2014;40:69–70. Published Online First 25 February 2014 Med Humanit 2014;40:69–70. doi:10.1136/medhum-2014-010497
Med Humanit June 2014 Vol 40 No 1
Downloaded from http://mh.bmj.com/ on April 12, 2015 - Published by group.bmj.com
Secrets−−and lies? The seventh European Psychoanalytic Film Festival Martin Liebscher Med Humanities 2014 40: 69-70 originally published online February 25, 2014
doi: 10.1136/medhum-2014-010497 Updated information and services can be found at: http://mh.bmj.com/content/40/1/69.2
These include:
Email alerting service
Receive free email alerts when new articles cite this article. Sign up in the box at the top right corner of the online article.
Notes
To request permissions go to: http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions To order reprints go to: http://journals.bmj.com/cgi/reprintform To subscribe to BMJ go to: http://group.bmj.com/subscribe/
