Freud: The Secret Passion
Freud: The Secret Passion, or simply Freud, is a 1962 American biographical drama film directed by John Huston and produced by Wolfgang Reinhardt. Based on the life of Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, it stars Montgomery Clift as Freud and Susannah York as his patient Cecily Koertner. Other cast members include Larry Parks, Susan Kohner, Eileen Herlie, Eric Portman, and David McCallum. The screenplay was by Charles Kaufman and Reinhardt, with some elements from a script by Jean-Paul Sartre, who withdrew his name from the film.
The film was theatrically released in the United States by Universal-International on December 12, 1962, and was selected to compete for the Golden Bear in the competition section at the 13th Berlin International Film Festival. It was nominated for two Academy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for York.
Plot
The film begins with a voice-over narration by director John Huston, describing the story as Sigmund Freud's "descent into a region almost as black as hell itself--man's unconscious--and how he let in the light." Huston's voice-overs also occur at the film's ending and substitute for Freud's thoughts in some scenes,In 1885 Vienna, young doctor Sigmund Freud has completed his medical training and finds himself at odds with hospital head Theodore Meynert, especially regarding the status of "hysteria" as a psychological disorder. With his mother Amalia's encouragement, Freud goes to Paris to study the condition with Dr. Jean-Marin Charcot, who has made some advances with the help of hypnosis but still has not been able to fully cure his patients.
Returning to Vienna, Freud marries Martha Bernays and sets up practice, trying Charcot's techniques to cure different patients of their neuroses. He is especially upset and driven to unsettling dreams, however, when one patient, Carl von Schlosser, stabs his soldier father's uniform and fondles the female mannequin beneath it. Although tempted to live a more routine life as a doctor, Freud partners with another doctor, Josef Breuer, who has made some progress by getting his patients to talk about their conditions while under hypnosis.
Together, Breuer and Freud treat Cecily Koertner. When it becomes apparent that Cecily is sexually attracted to Breuer, he leaves her treatment to Freud, who eventually foregoes hypnotism and has her recount her dreams and to free-associate words, memories, and ideas. Cecily's attachment to Breuer transfers to Freud, but despite Martha's concerns he presses on through different layers of Cecily's unconscious. Freud also begins to examine his own neuroses and dreams, leading him to the concepts of child sexuality and the Oedipus complex, concepts that Breuer is unable to accept.
At a lecture to other doctors and psychologists, Freud's ideas are received with derision, but a few people defend his willingness to break out of old habits and prejudices in search of the truth. Huston's narration closes with the "words carved on the temple at Delphi: Know thyself.... This knowledge is now within our grasp. Will we use it? Let us hope."
Production history
In 1958, John Huston decided to make a film about the life of the young Sigmund Freud, and asked Jean-Paul Sartre to write a summary of a projected scenario. Sartre submitted a synopsis of 95 pages, which was accepted, but later completed a finished script that, if filmed, would have amounted to a running time of five hours, which Huston considered far too long. Huston suggested cuts, but Sartre submitted an even longer script of eight hours, justifying the even longer version by saying, "On peut faire un film de quatre heures s'il s'agit de Ben Hur, mais le public de Texas ne supporterait pas quatre heures de complexes". Huston and Sartre quarreled, and Sartre withdrew his name from the film's credits. Nevertheless, many key elements from Sartre's script survive in the finished film, such as the creation of the composite patient Cecily Koertner, who combines features of Freud's patients Anna O., Elisabeth von R., Dora, and others. After Sartre's death, his screenplay was published separately as The Freud Scenario.Sartre and Huston were both interested in casting Marilyn Monroe as Cecily, but she turned down the offer and Susannah York was cast instead. Huston cast Larry Parks as Joseph Breuer in part to redeem Parks' career after being blacklisted, but this proved to be the actor's last film. Huston had previously worked with Montgomery Clift on The Misfits, but found himself uncomfortable with Clift's drug and alcohol problems, exacerbated by vision problems due to cataracts, and by his homosexuality. Freud proved to be Clift's next-to-last film performance. Filming took place over five months in Munich and Vienna and cost approximately four million dollars, twice the original budget. To satisfy the Production Code Authority, Huston cut the film's original length of over three hours to two hours and fifty minutes, but the studio cut an additional half-hour before the film was released.
Background
The film heavily compresses events, cases and acquaintances early in Freud's career, spanning from his work at the Vienna General Hospital under Theodor Meynert during the mid-1880s, through his research into hysteria and his seduction theory along with Breuer, up until his development of infantile sexuality and the Oedipus complex around the turn of the century that became the basis for his fundamental Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, first published in 1905.The character of Cecily Koertner is based upon a number of early patients of Freud's, most heavily drawing on the Anna O. case but also Dora and others. Similarly, the character of Josef Breuer and his role as mentor and friend in Freud's life as portrayed by Larry Parks is in fact a combination of the real Breuer with Wilhelm Fliess.