Psychoanalysis and the cinema developed at approximately the same time.

Discuss the influence of psychoanalysis on the cinema using at least one example from the surrealist era. Psychoanalysis is the theory that people can be treated by accessing their unconscious or subconscious. The pioneer of psychoanalysis, Freud tried to access the patients subconscious by analysing their dreams. His findings were published in his highly influential text, The Interpretation of Dreams. Freud stated that our conscious thought, which is the thought we are aware of, is only a small fraction of our mental state and that the subconscious hold more than 90%. He goes on to explain that our unconscious affects our behaviour, thoughts and feelings. This is where the Freudian slip was coined, which would be when someone says something other than what they were trying to say. Freud would say that this was your unconscious affecting you in a direct way, saying something you really want to without realising it. But the most famous part of this theory and the one that would go on to affect cinema in many ways was Freuds claim to be able to analyse the unconscious through someones dreams. During the same time another big shift was happening in the art culture, these shifts have been going on throughout time, switching from realism to cubism, modernism, surrealism etc. and that was that artist had a new technology at their fingertips. Cinema was becoming a new widely appreciated forum for peoples work and could reach a large audience at one time and could get a large reaction. An example would be the first film really ever shown Arrival of a train at La Ciotat which only featured a train arriving at a station but had the audience diving for cover as this what not something they had seen before. Obviously by the time Freud published his findings the audience had been a little desensitised but it still was a new technology and a new medium for art. All artistic works could be shown through this new technology to suit the artistic goals. Surrealists of the time were fascinated and inspired by what Freuds theory of dreams could mean. Surrealist art was to go above and beyond reality, and in our dreams reality is suspended in many cases, so for a leading psychologist to say that these dreams meant something clearly could inspire surrealist artists and poets to really show the meaning of their work. And the fact the film moves visually as a dream does, it made it the perfect medium to show their work. The first surrealist film made was Un Chien Andalou in 1928, created by Luis Buuel and artist Salvador Dal, which went against the conventional films of the day, disregarding typical plot and Structure. Instead the narrative is disjointed ranging from once upon a time to 8 years later with no apparent change to the characters. The film features scenes of a womans eye being slit with a cutthroat razor, a man wearing what appears to be a nuns habit, ants crawling out a characters hand and a woman finding a hand in the road before she is run over. The seemingly random display of scenes and images follows the mechanics of dreams in which a persons dreams switch from one scene to another in an almost random fashion. Bunuel said that he hoped the film would arouse the deepest impulses of the viewer which clearly relates to Psychoanalysis as the theory states that dreams are the impulses and emotions from our subconscious. Though this film was revolutionary in its structure and content the film was still very popular and ended up showing for 8 months in various cinemas. But since then the film has been under close scrutiny from film critics, psycho analysts and so on, and many have come away with different interpretations of the various scenes. A popular interpretation, of the scene with the cut off hand with a woman poking it with a stick, is that it symbolises male castration and

anxiety. If this were the desired meaning from the creators then there would be no questioning the strength influence of Freuds psychoanalysis theory for if you was to dream a similar scene thats exactly what the theory would say your subconscious was dealing with. However some argue that such interpretations, usually coming from people looking at it purely through psychoanalysis theory, give the scenes only one meaning and can be nothing else. However being that Surreal does not mean Unreal instead it means beyond real, surrealists wanted to create a multi layered reality in their work and every scene could have a multitude of meanings. This use of psychoanalytic theories continued on many other films of the time, Austrian director G.W. Pabst sought out advice from leading psychoanalysts of the time and asked the help of Karl Abraham and Hanns Sachs for his production, Secrets of a soul (Psychoanalysis and Film, 2001) Though the number of completed surrealist films during this time period was very small it was clear that psychoanalysis theory and surrealist cinema happening at the same time was having a huge effect on film makers. Which lead on to another point of psychoanalytic film theory; whos unconscious and conscious is showing in the film? Early theorists stated that it was showing the film makers unconscious. It would make sense that the person thinking and creating the images of the film would be the one that is being influenced by his subconscious that means that these images shown could tell a psycho analyst about the film maker. This is argued against by stating that the film maker is making a conscious decision on these dream sequences and so is nothing like analysing the actual film makers dreams and is more likely to be taking the accepted symbols of psychoanalysis and use them to convey the meaning he wishes in the film. And so this early theory and is no longer widely accepted. Developing the theory from it being the film makers unconscious people theorised that the images shown are the characters subconscious, and this may have some validity as the scenes and actions within such films are happening to the actor, be it dream or reality to the character, but yet again this can be brought down very easily in that the characters are fictional and so do not have a conscious or subconscious. Any conscious or subconscious portrayed by the character was created or interpreted by someone else and so is more likely to be their subconscious not that of a fictional character. A more recent theory is that what are experienced through the film are the audiences subconscious. As the images and symbols are shown the audience creates a bond to the film and thus projects their own subconscious thoughts on to the film. This would explain why it is difficult to establish just one meaning to the films scenes and that different interpretations are taken. No one can really prove this wrong in that case however theorists have gone to develop a more general view of psychoanalytic film theory. Ignoring earlier theories, it states that the form of the film is what really shows the psychoanalytic state of the film, for example how the film is edited and if you were to compare that with that of the sequence of a dream you are able to extract its unconscious meaning. So if a romance scene was playing but at the moment of intimacy between characters it cuts away, a psycho analyst may find the meaning to be a fear of intimacy and that would then be underlying the whole film. The surrealist films was short lived and began to die out in the 1930s, only producing a small amount of completed films. Eisenstein said that ...a films aesthetic value depended on its ability to transform reality (Eisenstein, 1920s). This applies to surrealist films however Eisensteins films usually took the form of montage. These leading film makers following different paths to surrealist films may be the reason that they practically died out during this time. However the movement did not die, it re-emerged after the Second World War with such films as Los Olvidados (1950) by Buuel, and Lampa (1959) by Roman Polanski. Though between these times there are not many productions of surrealist films, you can see

by watching these films that the genre has developed. Lampa is particular, though no longer features the disjointed dream like surrealism of the 1920s, it can still be associated with psychoanalysis theory. The film features a doll maker hard at work smoking a cigarette, and then you are shown shots of many of the different dolls half made around the shop, all of which seem lifeless except their eyes, some you could argue even look like corpses. The doll maker then boards up his shop so nothing can be seen of the inside. This is when a fire starts after menacing sounds are played and you see the dolls burning while in distressed poses. The camera then begins to track out showing the level of destruction of the shop as the fire burns before cutting to an exterior shot of the shop where no one can see the destruction inside and all seems peaceful and quiet. Now the symbolism and sound throughout the film have much meaning Im sure but on a very basic level the film is still directly linked to Freuds theory. The inside of the shop, with the distressed dolls, scary sounds and fire all give the impression of wildness, anger, destruction and basically emotion of a variety, I believe this is a clear representation of the subconscious of peoples minds whereas the calm and peaceful exterior represents the conscious mind. It is a very literal expression of the theory but it is very strongly linked. So even 20 to 30 years later the theory is still having a massive influence on surrealist film makers. As I have stated before surrealism is an art form that goes beyond reality, however realism is an art form that concentrates on the material, exactly what you can see. Realism could be said to influence a huge amount of mainstream cinema. Dramas and such show people doing what in reality, life includes. These films do not tend to feature the unreal; the narrative is restricted by its realism mentality. So it stands to reason that surrealism struggles against this art form in many aspects and would not join together but fight against each other as they seem to be the opposite sides of the board. But this is not true. In many cases realism, mainstream cinema has worked together with surrealist artists, to create a hybrid film of both. Obviously you cant just mix the two together otherwise this would create a surrealist film in effect so what a lot of film makers did, including Alfred Hitchcock is make dream sequences in their films so they could experiment with surrealism and psychoanalysis. In 1944 Alfred Hitchcock was working on his film Spellbound. During its production Hitchcock hired Salvador Dali, the same man who worked with Buuel on Un Chien Andalou, to create a dream sequence within his film. Salvador Dali was a celebrated surrealist artist and his boldness with his art made him very famous at the time. Alfred Hitchcock said that dream sequences in cinema were not vivid or bold enough, and thats where Salvador Dali would come in. Hitchcock was impressed by his vivid and strong dreamlike art and wished to see that in his film. He was quoted saying: All Dalis work is very solid and very sharp, with very long perspectives and black shadows. All dreams in the movies are blurred. Dali was the best man for me to do the dreams because that is what dreams should be (Hitchcock, 1945). The dream sequence created features a lot of symbolism such has giant pairs of scissors cutting through pictures of eyes, not completely dissimilar to that of Un Chien Andalou where a razor cuts through an eye. You can see the strong influence of Dalis work throughout the sequences, some of it even bearing resemblance to one of Dalis portraits The persistence of memory. Which include a distortion of space and also the warped shapes of objects such as a wheel (Very close to the distorted clocks of the picture). As for the psychoanalysis part of the scene, while this dream sequence is being shown, the man experiencing it is telling a psychiatrist. This is a blatant link of Freuds psychoanalysis, and shows the importance of it even after so long of the theory being published, plus even the psychiatrist of the film, Doctor Brulov, bears the stereotypical characteristics of Freud himself (White beard, small glasses, strong foreign

accent etc.). The link between the dream sequence and the psychiatrists office obviously shows the link between surrealism and realism. Early surrealist film makers said that the visual was centre of a film; this would explain why dream sequences and abstract images are the main content of this genre of film. The rich visuals allow for a structured narrative and plot to be ignored. However a linear structure and plot is the widely accepted rule of filmmaking, and is what the audience would expect. But if surrealist filmmakers adhered to this rule the disjointed feel of the abstract images would be lost and the psychoanalysis influence, which these dreams and symbolism is based on wouldnt make sense because it would no longer represent the subconscious due to it following a conscious rule. But as the films of this genre have developed so has the representation of images as dreams. I revert back to Lampa by Polanski, and though there is no dialogue or much story, the narrative still follows convention. If you applied the three act structure to this piece, it starts with the equilibrium of the doll maker going about his business, the dis-equilibrium would be when the doll maker leaves and the fire starts, and it end with a new equilibrium of the calm outside and the shop destroyed on the inside. Though this is a very simplistic way of looking at the narrative structure of the piece it shows that surrealist filmmakers are able to follow conventions of film making and still achieve a surrealist film. This leads me on to the more modern surrealist films. David Lynch would be an example of modern surrealist film makers. A great deal of his films such as Blue Velvet and EraserHead were feature length, and very popular. Blue Velvet in particular followed a typical structure and a storyline that people could follow. The dream sequences of the past films had gone and a Conventional narrative was in its place. Yet the same psychoanalytic themes that were present in Lampa, Lynch uses in these cinematic milestone. The story follows Jeffrey Beaumont investigating a mystery and involuntarily gets dragged into a dark underworld of murder and sex. The imagery as well as the story all still follows the same pattern of conscious to subconscious. The film is set in suburban America; every part of this set is the stereotypically picturesque town, with picket fences and houses with their lovely green lawns. Again I believe this to represent the conscious state of mind where at first look there is nothing wrong. Lynch then shows what lies beneath this perfect town. And he does it with just one sequence. The establishing shot is that of the picturesque town, the red fire trucks goings past, children being led across the road by a lollypop man etc. Then as a man is hurt and knocked to the ground the camera tracks into the grass, going further under the layers of foliage until it reveals the darker, dirtier bottom layer where the insects creep around and struggle with each other. This seems to be a very literal way of visualising that underneath all this perfect scenery there still lies the darkness, the dirt etc. I believe this to be a representation of the subconscious which is supposed to contain the instinctive drives of human behaviour. Also it relates to the plot of the film itself that among what seems like a faultless town the dark underworld of murder etc. still exists and affects people. In conclusion you can see that surrealist films and psychoanalysis are closely linked and the theory has affected the surrealist film movement in a big way. Plus even now, with modern films, surrealist movement is still strongly affected, it may have stepped back from the dream sequences but the underlying subconscious of these films comes through, breaking the reality of the conscious whatever it may be.

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