Film and TV Seminar Series: Sian Mitchell
September 11th 2008
A Historiography of Psychoanalytic Film in Hollywood, 1920-1960
This seminar looks at some of the films influenced by the introduction of psychoanalysis as a therapeutic practice to the United States in the early 1900s. This was a period where psychoanalysis grew in popularity and support within mass culture before undergoing a crisis within academic and professional circles. Films that will be discussed in this seminar include Carefree (Mark Sandrich, 1938), Lady in the Dark (Mitchell Leisen, 1944), Spellbound (Alfred Hitchcock, 1945), and Freud (John Huston, 1962). Elements such as the image of the analyst and the neurotic patient within these films form an exaggerated and sometimes melodramatic (mis)representation of psychoanalytic practice, however, such insistence on therapy as a narrative device has assisted in its popularisation and ongoing love/hate relationship psychoanalysis has with American cinema.
Sian Mitchell is a PhD candidate in Film and Television Studies at Monash University, researching parody, psychoanalysis, and therapy culture in the films of Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze.