Boxoffice > The Business of Movies > Steve Simels > Weekend Cinema Listomania (Special <em>I Oughta Have My Head Examined</em> Edition)

Weekend Cinema Listomania (Special I Oughta Have My Head Examined Edition)

posted June 27, 2008 9:54 AM

the furies movie poster.jpg

DVD Event of the Week: No, it's not the just released 10,000 BC, the Cavemen in Chains shlockfest which we had a little fun with earlier this month; rather it's the stunning new Criterion Edition version of Anthony Mann's 1950 Freudian western classic The Furies , starring Walter Huston and Barbara Stanwyck as a father/daughter rivalry that would have given shpilkes to King Lear.

From Criterion's synopsis:

In 1870s New Mexico Territory, megalomaniacal widowed ranch owner T. C. Jeffords (Huston, in his final role) butts heads with his daughter, Vance (Stanwyck), a firebrand with serious daddy issues, over her dowry, choice of husband, and, finally, ownership of the land itself. Both sophisticated in its view of frontier settlement and ablaze with searing domestic drama, The Furies is a hidden treasure of American filmmaking, boasting Oscar™-nominated cinematography and vivid supporting turns from Judith Anderson, Wendell Corey, and Gilbert Roland.

There's more of course, including an astounding Oedipal reversal involving Stanwyck throwing a pair of scissors into the eyeball of a woman Huston wants to marry, but it really needs to be seen to be believed. Criterion's single-disc edition features the usual knockout transfer, plus extras including a 1957 Cahiers du Cinema interview with director Mann and a paperback reissue of the Niven Busch novel the film is based on. Order it here immediately.
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the furies.jpg

But speaking of cinematic Freudianisms, and since, as usual, things are going to be pretty quiet around here for a few days, here's a little project to tide us all over:

Best Movie Featuring a Shrink (Strict Freudian or Otherwise)!!!

And my totally top of my head Top Five is:

5. The President's Analyst (Theodore J. Flicker -- 1967)
Hip New York City shrink James Coburn listens to the most powerful man in the Free World, but in the finale to what is still the funniest paranoid conspiracy flick ever discovers that the real power lies elsewhere -- just a monthly utilities bill away, in fact.

4. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene -- 1920)
The original Expressionist classic, and probably the first serious film featuring a psychiatrist. Avoid the 60s remake, despite the comforting presences of Dan O'Herlihy and Glynis Johns.

3. Lovesick (Marshall Brickman -- 1983)
Dudley Moore is a Jewish(!) therapist who falls in love with an adorable patient (Elizabeth McGovern) and is visited by visions of Sigmund Freud himself (Alec Guinness). With a pre-wingnut Ron Silver in a hilarious turn as an egomaniacal actor clearly modeled on Al Pacino, and Christine Baranski as a nymphomaniac.

2. Dressed to Kill (Brian DePalma -- 1980)
Michael Caine stars as a NYC psychiatrist who's also a cross-dressing serial slasher (hey -- it happens all the time). Angie Dickinson has what you think is a nude shower scene, but unfortunately it's a body double.

And the number one shrink flick, like there could possibly be any other choice, so why are you bugging me? is --

1. Dracula's Dog (Albert Band -- 1978)
Also known as Zoltan, Hound of Dracula. In either case, B-movie tough guy actor Michael Pataki stars as a mild-mannered shrink who encounters the titular Satanic pooch while on summer vacation. With Arlene Martel, Mr. Spock's scheming fiancé from the classic Star Trek episode "Amok Time."

Awrighty then -- what would your choices be?

20 Comments

ProfWombat said:

'The Seven Percent Solution', which is one of the all time great Holmes pastiches, as well...

The simultaneous uncritical adoption of Freudian tropes contrasts rather interestingly with the endless numbers of feckless, pusillanimous actual psychiatrists we've been treated to.

June 27, 2008 6:09 AM

Gummo said:

Well, 'cause I have no shame and no problem belaboring the obvious, how can you leave out 1962's Freud? A John Huston-directed effort that I'm sure he would just as soon have forgotten, the film features Montgomery Clift as a tortured (of course!) overwrought scenery-chewing Sigmund Freud.

I haven't seen this one in decades but it used to be a perennial in the old after-school 4:30 movie slot back in the 60s and early 70s so you couldn't avoid it. I remember it as being tortuously slow and leadenly serious/

And then there's 1976's Fantasm, a softcore sex film from, of all places, Australia, which features a framing device of a typical caricature of a Viennese therapist explaining women's sex problems (as defined by men, of course) as an introduction to ridiculous segments "illustrating" each "problem". What makes this movie stand out from its kind, if anything, is the above-average cinematography and some feeble attempts at humor (though there is one gag just as the opening credits end that is pretty funny).

June 27, 2008 6:38 AM

Mrs. Peel said:

Hitchcock's "Spellbound" with Ingrid Bergman playing Gregory Peck's shrink, and its great dream sequence by Salvador Dali ...

.. which is referenced in Mel Brooks' "High Anxiety", who plays Dr. Richard Thorndyke, the new administrator of the Psychoneurotic Institute for the Very, VERY Nervous.

June 27, 2008 6:53 AM

Anonymous said:

BOXING HELENA ,, ART GARFUNKEL PLAYS PSYCHIATRIST DR LAWRENCE AUGUSTINE

BAD TIMING A SENSUAL OBSESSION : AGAIN ART GARFUNKEL AS A PSYCHOANALYST
now thats ironic .......

June 27, 2008 7:26 AM

Anonymous said:

Anthony Heald in Silence of the Lambs --

June 27, 2008 7:52 AM

Anonymous said:

while we're on Silence of The Lambs -good ol' Sir Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter...

June 27, 2008 7:55 AM

Anonymous said:

Richard Gere, Kim Basinger , Uma Thurman
FINAL ANALYSIS ! one big "otherwise"

June 27, 2008 8:07 AM

l'atalante said:

The President's Analyst comes to mind at once... still pretty relevant to my mind.

On the other end of the scale, Three Nuts in Search of a Bolt. At least Mamie Van Doren didn't play the psychiatrist.

June 27, 2008 1:22 PM

Trey said:

I enjoyed Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense, and Bill Murray in The Royal Tenenbaums. My hands down favorite is Richard Dreyfuss in What About Bob?

Trey

June 27, 2008 7:15 PM

emma said:

Billy Crystal - Analyze This (De Niro must have had large gambling debts to stoop to this movie)
Louise Fletcher - One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (psych nurse, but really.... how can we not include Nurse Ratched?!)

June 27, 2008 8:40 PM

Anonymous said:

Now, Voyager - Claude Rains as Dr. Jaquith. Does anyone not think that he, and not Paul Henreid's rather dull Jerry, was the man Charlotte Vale would fall in love with?

June 28, 2008 6:22 AM

ProfWombat said:

Well, one of the classic psychoanalytic tropes is transference. So Charlotte Vale's love for Dr Jaquith got transferred onto Jerry. Besides, the two cigarettes lit in Jerry's mouth said it all.

June 28, 2008 7:14 AM

Billy B said:

Damn. I need to watch more movies.

I haven't seen any of the flicks in simels' list.

June 28, 2008 7:19 AM

Neon Serpent said:

What, no "Equus" with Richard Burton?

June 28, 2008 7:35 AM

Anonymous said:

ProfWombat said:

Well, one of the classic psychoanalytic tropes is transference. So Charlotte Vale's love for Dr Jaquith got transferred onto Jerry. Besides, the two cigarettes lit in Jerry's mouth said it all.

I've seen that movie a million times and I never noticed that.

Good lord...

June 28, 2008 7:36 AM

Brooklyn Girl said:

The nameless shrink in Officer Krupke from West Side Story:

"This boy has a social disease!"

"I'm depraved on account I'm deprived!"

June 28, 2008 8:09 AM

Anonymous said:

Didn't Jerry Lewis play a shrink once? If so, that is my favorite.

June 28, 2008 10:16 AM

Culture of Truth said: