Review: Freud

Depicting the early stages in the career of Dr. Sigmund Freud (Montgomery Clift), whose progressive ideas for treating the mentally ill earn the ire of his stuffy colleagues. This is especially the case with Freud’s mentor Dr. Meynert (Eric Portman) who believes the patients are merely faking illnesses for attention. Susannah York and David McCallum play disturbed patients whose neuroses will result in the formation of Freud’s Oedipus-complex theory (with Freud having daddy issues himself that haunt him as well). Larry Parks plays Freud’s friend and professional colleague, Rosalie Crutchley plays Freud’s mother, Susan Kohner is Freud’s wife, Allan Cuthbertson plays another professional colleague, whilst director John Huston narrates the film.

 

The frustratingly uneven penultimate film in the career of Montgomery Clift sees him unhelpfully cast as a supposedly neurotic Sigmund Freud. This 1962 biopic from director John Huston (director of my favourite film “The Misfits” a year prior, co-starring Clift) and screenwriters Charles Kaufman (“Breakfast for Two”) and Wolfgang Reinhardt (“Hitler: The Last Ten Days”) just never convinced me that I was seeing the story of Sigmund Freud. Being choppy and episodic doesn’t help either, but at the basic core of it, I just didn’t buy into what I was being given and thus felt at arm’s length to most of it. Clift – one of the all-time great actors in my opinion – looks nothing like Freud, and if the real Freud was wracked with neuroses himself (and I’ve indeed read that to be the case), I simply didn’t believe the version of it presented here. Having the already rather troubled Clift play the role, it’s too heavy-handed. Apparently he was a wreck at the time and Huston treated him like crap. Perhaps this is part of the problem, and Huston should’ve either re-cast the role or eased the hell up on Clift. It’s just too over-the-top to be credible, almost psychodrama at times. The idea of Freud showing signs of mental illness also comes off as a bit gimmicky/clever for the sake of it here. Ooooh, the infamous psychiatrist Freud was neurotic himself! Yeah, OK. That’s cute, but not enough for me to be invested in an entire film of it.

 

If you’re looking for a real biopic of the man from birth until death, you won’t get it here. This is an occasionally experimental/arty film about mental illness in both patient and psychiatrist and focuses on just a short period in Freud’s life. I wasn’t quite as interested in that as I probably would’ve been a straight biopic, at least not the way Huston has given it to us. Having said that, at least on a thematic level the film was fascinating at times. It didn’t draw me in emotionally or dramatically, but it was at least intellectually stimulating from time to time, I can’t deny that. It has also been wonderfully shot in stark B&W by Douglas Slocombe (“The Blue Max”, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”) , the film’s greatest asset. It’s in the direction and cinematography that this film stands out more than story or character, even if the dream sequences are a touch over-the-top. The music score by the great Jerry Goldsmith (“A Patch of Blue”, “Planet of the Apes”, “The Omen”) is quite fine too and earned him his first Academy Award nomination. Most of the cast surrounding Clift is pretty impressive, though I wasn’t sold on the normally terrific Rosalie Crutchley. Cast as Freud’s mother, she’s all too British-sounding and it’s a bit distracting. Eric Portman is excellent and feels far more Freud-like than Clift, whilst Susannah York runs off with the entire film. Hers is a tricky role that could’ve gone horribly hammy, but she reins it in just enough. There’s also a rock-solid performance by a well-cast David McCallum as a nervy patient with mother issues up to yin-yang. Even Larry Parks, not an actor I’ve previously cared much for, is quite good here too. So there’s plenty to like here, but with something screwy at its centre the film didn’t quite work for me.

 

Well-directed, well-shot, and mostly well-acted this biopic is intellectually stimulating but ultimately fails to convince. Thus it keeps one at a distance emotionally. The depiction of Freud as being as neurotic as his patients is overdone and would’ve benefitted from a less neurotic, more subtle lead performance. There’s perhaps too much Monty Clift here and not enough Siggy Freud. I think Huston was aiming high here but not quite getting there in the end.

 

Rating: C+