Freud, passions secrètes

The very underrated 1962 picture "Freud" shows again why its director John Huston was a masterful biographer and adapter of the works of others. As much as a movie is able to, he captures the slightly mad, intense world of psychoanalysis using its father as his dramatic subject. In fact, the film is a perfect and popular introduction into this the most personal of sciences. The film puts me in mind of Hitchcock's "Spellbound", Bergman's "Wild Strawberries", Lynch's "The Elephant Man" and Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" - all of which deal with the stuff of which nightmares are made.

I agree with most of the positive reviews here at IMDb, so I will concentrate on another aspect of the film.

Hollywood legend contends that during the shooting of FREUD, John Huston gleefully and sadistically brutalized poor, trusting Montgomery Clift, both physically and emotionally. The story took hold and has been repeated countless times by Clift biographers down to this day, despite the lack of any corroborating witnesses, plus no other actors ever came forward to say that Huston was so cruel to them on other shoots.

For the most part, John Huston didn't care what people said about him, but this story actually did damage to his reputation. It is the only negative story about Huston that he felt the need to respond to. In his 1979 memoirs, AN OPEN BOOK, Huston gives a detailed account of the shooting of FREUD, and addresses the specific allegations against him. We may never know the whole truth, but Huston does quite a credible job of defending himself. Naturally, his side of the story never got as much attention as the original charges. You should find the book and read it.

More trivia: After Jean-Paul Sartre's death, his admirers published much of his original, unused screen treatment, and predictably condemned John Huston for not filming Sartre's eight-hour screenplay (as if anyone would have tolerated an eight-hour movie).

Because of Sigmund Freud's theories, FREUD was arguably the first motion picture to deal, even briefly, with the subject of incest. In real life, Freud contended that many adolescents go through a phase where they have sexual feelings for their parents of the opposite sex, and then go into denial that they ever felt such things after they get older. If Freud was correct, the denial is very strong, for he is reviled for this theory to this day. But readers, can you HONESTLY say that, as a young teen, that you never once cast a glance at mom's legs or her cleavage?

FREUD is a good biographical film, and it is a shame that it has never been pleased on VHS or DVD. One has to wonder why---maybe Freud's theories still hit that raw of a nerve?

What happened to the dream scene? This film is now at long last available on DVD. Unfortunately this new DVD version is still missing the dream scene that I clearly remember seeing on the films cinema release back in 1962. It occurs when Freud can't follow his fathers funeral into the cemetery. Instead he faints and then we are plunged into his famous dream - the one about "the eyes shall be closed". (Freud recounts it I believe in The Interpretation of Dreams). In the film the only remnant of the dream remaining is a night time shot of noisy train pulling out of a railway station. Thats the tail end of the dream for anybody wondering what it is. Then Freud describes to Breur what the dream was about. Why this scene is repeatedly cut from the few bootleg versions available and now the new DVD version I have no idea. Its a pity because like the other dreams in the film it was impressively filmed by Huston.

According to the Citadel Film Series book about the films of John Huston, he was interested for about 20 years in bringing Sigmund Freud's life and work to the big screen. When he finally got a script from philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre it was an eight hour epic which he finally trimmed down to less than two and half hours. A manageable length and it only covers the years 1885 to 1891 when Freud developed his theories about infant sexuality and the Oedipal complex.

Just the mere fact that when you mention psychology and ask who is the person most associated with the field and Freud is the answer 99% of the time qualifies him to be the first man of his field. Those theories which he expounds have been challenged down through the years, but more often than not his peers are building on what he started and not just outrightly dismissing Freud.

The subject is probably too complex a one to bring to the screen for the lay person, but Huston makes a valiant effort. Huston also had Code parameters to deal with in 1962. Huston is also helped along by a great performance he coaxed out of Montgomery Clift and God knows Clift was a man by that time beset with his own demons of the mind and had seen enough of psychology as well as more addicting methods of pain control. Huston had the devil's own time with Clift, but Clift responded greatly. It was a miracle this film was finished at all.

This was Montgomery Clift's last really great film. He did a rather pedestrian spy novel The Defector four years later as his last film. That was like a tune up film for him to do before he was to start Reflections In A Golden Eye. Monty was way too gone by then and essentially just walked through that one. He should have gone out with Freud.

There are a couple of other performances of note. Sussanah York as the girl who Clift treats that really gets him thinking along the lines of sex and David McCallum as well as a mental patient who shows some interesting subliminal sexual behavior under hypnosis. Larry Parks also makes an appearance as Freud's colleague, friend, but critic in the end Joseph Breuer.

Essentially Freud is Clift's show all the way and a grand show it is. And this review is dedicated to my father Leonard S. Kogan who was most prominent in this field and had a bust of Freud along with Einstein and Washington among the bric a brac in our house as people he admired.

Hypnosis, hysteria, moody B/W photography, beards and a haunted Montgomery Clift combine in a fascinating movie.

I have seen this film a few times and each time I appreciate it a little more. It concentrates on the years in Sigmund Freud's life around 1890 when he made his groundbreaking studies on the nature of sexuality.

Although I had the impression Freud was more of a solo act, the film shows that after a falling out with the head of the Vienna Hospital, Dr. Theodore Meynert (Eric Portman), friend and mentor Dr. Joseph Breuer (Larry Parks) played a big role in his discoveries.

As Freud deals with one intriguing case after another, he encounters Cecily Koertner, played by a sexy Susannah York, who has a disturbing father hang-up and enough problems for a battalion of pioneering psychiatrists. This was relatively early in Susannah's career and she just about steals the show. Sadly she is gone now, a bit young at 72.

Montgomery Clift's performance has a quality of suffering that he didn't have to fake. Director John Huston pieced together Clift's performance because the actor's life was pretty well out of control by this stage. However, a recent documentary, "Making Montgomery Clift", gives another side to the story with more blame levelled at Huston for the problematic production. That aside, what a presence Monty still had, he was probably the only actor who ever remotely intimidated Brando.

Insights come when Freud deals with the troubled Carl von Schlossen who has savagely attacked his father. Schlossen was played by David McCallum a few years before "Man from Uncle" fame. When Freud deduces the attack was over the younger Schlossen's jealousy of his mother, Freud is shocked into the realisation that his own infantile feelings for his mother may well have gone beyond love of her strudel.

Huston approached all this as a mystery thriller, especially when the treatment of Cecily reveals to Freud that just about all repressed emotional disturbances are based on conflicted feelings toward mum and dad.

Jerry Goldsmith's score helps drive the film; it's as atonal as they come, but it grows on you. Again, like many of the stars, it was early in the career of the great film maestro.

The film mixes in dream sequences with plenty of symbolism reminiscent of the films of Ingmar Bergman. In fact the whole thing has a Bergmanesque quality. And talk about the id and the ego, John Huston delivers God-like narration at key points.

Huston made many great films as well as a couple of duds, however "Freud" was a bold idea; it's challenging, but beautifully made and deserves to be ranked among his best.