Freud

Huston concentrates on the young Freud, driven by a pathological desire to 'know', discovering the existence of the unconscious. The narrative suggests similarities between Freud and other Huston heroes who are inexorably compelled to acknowledge the unacceptable faces of the self. But the banal misconceptions about psychoanalysis repeated in the film are contradicted by the force of the mise en scène, with its narrative dislocations and the excessive pictorialism of the image track making 'Freud' an extraordinary, uncanny film noir. As if the telling of this particular tale could not but re-inscribe into the text what the trivialisation of psychoanalysis seeks to repress. Together with The Asphalt Jungle, Freud is Huston's most remarkable film.