Sigmund Freud on the big screen

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À LA UNE
PSYCHANALYSE
[888] C2
Sigmund Freud
on the big screen
DIVIN DIVAN. A Dangerous Method, dans les salles le 21 décembre, met en scène les tensions entre Sigmund Freud
(Viggo Mortensen) et Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) à la veille de la Première guerre mondiale. Ce film, réalisé
par le Canadien David Cronenberg et présenté aux festivals de Venise et Toronto, dresse un portrait du père de la
psychanalyse comme on en a rarement vu au cinéma…
THE INDEPENDENT
Sigmund Freud on
the big screen
Sigmund Freud au
cinéma
talking cure cure par la parole, cure psychanalytique / play pièce de théâtre / subsequently par la
suite / affair liaison / pivotal crucial, capital / break
rupture.
2. The Brood Chromosome 3 / et al et autres / body
horror film d’horreur dont le thème est la mutation, mutilation ou destruction du corps / obvious
évident, tout indiqué / dialogue-driven se concentrant sur les dialogues, basé sur les dialogues / costume drama film historique, en costume /
turn-of-the-century tournant du siècle, ici du début
du XXe, années 1900 / impotence impuissance
(sexuelle) / psyche psychisme.
3. arousal excitation / vying rivalité / alpha dog
mâle dominant, leader.
4. pervasive envahissant, omniprésent / to portray représenter, incarner / infrequently rarement
/ shrink “psy”, psychanalyste / countless innombrable / backlash retour de balancier, réaction /
fraud imposture / to dub qualifier, baptiser / to
worry inquiéter / rich pickings ici manne (providentielle) / screenwriter scénariste.
5. to testify to témoigner, attester de / to joke plaisanter, se moquer / relentlessly inlassablement,
constamment / to quip ironiser / as a matter of fact
en fait / session séance / to miss manquer / (it)
doesn’t come cheap (ce) n’est pas pour rien.
6. to take, took, taken fright prendre peur / response réaction / stern sévère, strict / beard barbe
/ to pop up surgir, apparaître / I Dream Of Jeannie
Jinny de mes rêves, série américaine des années
60 / Sabrina, The Teenage Witch Sabrina, l’apprentie sorcière, série américaine des années 70
tirée de la bande dessinée éponyme / buddy pote,
copain /
6 • VOCABLE Du 15 au 28 décembre 2011
BY GEOFFREY MACNAB
alk?” “Yes, just talk,” Carl Jung
says to his patient, Sabina Spielrein, early in A Talking Cure, the
Christopher Hampton play that
David Cronenberg has made into
a film, A Dangerous Method. The
play suggests that Jung not only treated Spielrein but subsequently had an affair with her.
Their relationship marked a pivotal moment
in the emergence of the new discipline of
psychoanalysis, helping lead to a break between the 29-year-old Jung and his mentor,
Sigmund Freud.
2. Cronenberg, the Canadian director of
Crash, The Brood et al and the visual chronicler of body horror is not the obvious choice
for a dialogue-driven costume drama set in
turn-of-the-century Vienna. Nonetheless, as
the producer Jeremy Thomas says of A Dangerous Method: “The film is like an incredible action movie with words. The references,
whether or not you understand psychoanalysis, are so strong with dreams, impotence, desires, jealousy – all the things that
are in the human psyche.”
3. Sabina, played by Keira Knightley, is an
immensely complex character: beaten by her
father as a child, she is a masochist who finds
sexual arousal in humiliation. The film also
presents the vying of two alpha dogs, Jung
(Michael Fassbender) and Freud (Viggo
Mortensen).
T
Apparitions
4. The influence of Freud on cinema is
so pervasive that it may come as a surprise
that Freud himself has been portrayed on
screen relatively infrequently. We have seen
shrinks in countless comedies and dramas.
Even when there has been a backlash against
Freud – “the great fraud”, as he was dubbed
by the psychologist Hans Eysenck – it hasn’t
worried Hollywood. Freud’s work has provided very rich pickings for screenwriters.
5. Film-makers have testified to the influence of Freud. Psychoanalysts are a leitmotif in Woody Allen’s work, even as he jokes
relentlessly about them. In Annie Hall,
Allen’s Alvy Singer quips: “I was in analysis. I was suicidal. As a matter of fact, I would
have killed myself, but I was in analysis with
a strict Freudian and if you kill yourself they
make you pay for the sessions you miss.” The
talking cure doesn’t come cheap.
6. However, when it comes to portraying
Freud himself, film-makers seem to take
fright. Their most familiar response is to
show him as a stern, patriarchal, cigar-smoking figure with a Father Christmas-like beard
and, perhaps, a penchant for cocaine. The
founder of psychoanalysis pops up in I Dream
Of Jeannie and Sabrina, The Teenage Witch.
(“I don’t know how to interpret dreams,” Sabrina complains. “You don’t but my old buddy
Sigmund Freud does!” replies Salem the cat.
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Cue the appearance of the man from Vienna
in the teenage girl’s bedroom).
Get serious
7. If Freud’s portrayal in pop culture is
relentlessly superficial, the results when filmmakers try to take him seriously are often
worse. There have been a number of stolid
costume dramas and biopics that have attempted to tell the Freud story. In 1962, John
Huston’s powers seemed to desert him when
he directed Montgomery Clift as the Doctor
in Freud: The Secret Passion. Huston had enlisted Jean-Paul Sartre to write the screenplay but the French philosopher handed in
a draft, several hundred pages long, that was
considered unfilmable.
8. Instead, Huston used a far more conventional treatment. As the critic Todd McCarthy
noted, relations between Huston and Clift
soured, devolving into “some sort of weird
sadomasochistic game, with Huston allegedly baiting and torturing Clift and the
actor turning increasingly to drink.” Little
trace of the tensions between star and director were evident, however, in a film that,
by critical consensus, was too conventional
and too straitlaced.
9. In 1984, the critics were not much kinder
to a “lumbering” BBC drama, Freud, which
starred David Suchet. Its problem, one critic
wrote, was that it tried too hard “to relate
the life to the work in a Freudian way”, with
sequences of Freud’s dreams and flashbacks
to his youth. There was also too much detail,
“as though this were a kind of Open University course with tassels”.
10. While the Beeb’s Freud was considered
too reverential, the following year Hugh
Brody’s Nineteen Nineteen was attacked for
taking too many liberties. It is fine to take
liberties with Freud in light-hearted comedies like Sabrina, The Teenage Witch but is
clearly frowned upon when film-makers
adopt a more earnest approach.
Let’s talk
11. Whether this new film will make us
see Freud in a new light is doubtful. What it
might prove, though, is that the talking cure
has as much dramatic potential as ever. You
do not need to be Sabrina the Teenage Witch
to relish the possibilities that it provides for
probing deep into what drives the most
closed and enigmatic characters. ●
Sexe et thérapie, version Hollywood !
Aujourd’hui on parle tout le temps de ce
qu’on désire. Parlions-nous autant quand
nous voulions moins ?
Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and Jung
(Michael Fassbender) having tea or coffee?
(DR)
to cue donner le signal, lancer.
7. portrayal portrait, représentation / stolid froid,
sans émotion, ici cérébral / biopic film biographique
/ to attempt tenter / to direct mettre en scène, diriger / Freud: The Secret Passion Freud, passions
secrètes / to enlist enrôler, engager, mettre à contribution / screenplay scénario / to hand in remettre
/ draft avant-projet, ébauche.
8. to sour se détériorer / to devolve into dégénérer
en / weird étrange, bizarre / allegedly soi-disant /
to bait harceler / by critical consensus de l’avis
général de la critique / straitlaced collet monté,
contraint.
9. kind gentil, bienveillant / lumbering lourd(ingue)
/ to relate mettre en(cor)relation, rattacher / youth
jeunesse / Open University université à distance/par
correspondance / tassel gland, pompon (passementerie).
10. Beeb surnom de la BBC / reverential respectueux / light-hearted enjoué, léger / to frown upon
regarder de travers, désapprouver, voir d’un mauvais oeil / earnest sérieux.
11. doubtful incertain, peu probable / to relish goûter, apprécier / to probe explorer, sonder, ici pénétrer / to drive, drove, driven ici motiver.
Du 15 au 28 décembre 2011 VOCABLE • 7