Secrets of a Soul (1925/26). Photo courtesy of Deutsche
kinemathek, Berlin
Go ahead. Lie down on the couch and vent about your problems to
the doctor — even if he is just a character on screen.
"Movies on the Mind: Psychology and Film Since Sigmund Freud,"
opening Friday at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, lets visitors
to do just that.
The traveling exhibition, organized last year in celebration of Freud's 150th
birthday by the Deutsche Kinemathek museum, not only explores the relationships
between film and psychology but also surveys the history of movies from a
psychological point of view.“
Movies on the Mind” uses posters, photographs, staged
environments and numerous film clips to illustrate its points. Sequences are
drawn from films ranging from Jean Cocteau’s
Orphée and Ingmar Bergman’s Persona to several works by
Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho, Marnie, Spellbound) and Woody Allen (Annie
Hall, the “Oedipus Wrecks” episode from New York Stories). The
exhibition examines the pathologies represented in such horror films as Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and The Silence of the Lambs, and
it showcases more recent psychologically oriented films, including Being
John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
The multimedia exhibition is divided into theme areas that allow visitors to
experience a series of psychological states.
"For example, when you go into the narcissism area, there are film clips
that relate to identity and people who are self-obsessed," says Ellen
Harrington, the academy's director of special events and exhibitions. "And
you stand between a mirror and a real projection screen so you are actually in
the scene."
In another display, clips from movies dealing with dreams are projected on a
ceiling; to watch, visitors can climb into a hospital bed. And in an area
featuring clips about analysts and patients, there is an embroidered Victorian
armchair "like one that was in Freud's office and a therapy coach of old
leather, so people can either lie down or sit and watch the clips."
Finally, a "crying room" is dedicated to clips that elicit sadness.
"You enter through a red curtain and it's very dark," Harrington says.
"The curators from Berlin said that people sat in there crying during the
run of the exhibition."
--
"Movies on the Mind," Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Science's Fourth Floor Gallery, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. Opens
Friday. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Fridays, noon to 6 p.m.
Saturdays and Sundays. Ends Sept. 16. Free. (310) 247-3600, www.oscars.org/events
and filmmuseum-berlin.de/kino-im-kopf/
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