Wednesday 14 January 2009

Svengali

"Whether any viewers ever found Gabbo or his dummy uncanny I do not know. It does seem to me more likely that such a feeling was elicited by another film of the period, Svengali (Mayo, 1931). In the most famous sequence in this film, the title character (John Barrymore) summons Trilby (Marian Marsh) across several Paris streets to his attic studio.
...
I find this sequence powerfully evoking the uncanniness of early sound films."

Spadoni, Robert pp.41-2 Uncanny Bodies 2007

Tuesday 6 January 2009

David Lynch essay

Here's a link to an essay about Psychological Horror in the Films of David Lynch.

David Lynch Mullholland DriveThe aim of the essay is, "to investigate the links between psychology, as presented by Sigmund Freud in his essay The 'Uncanny' (1919) and Carl G. Jung in his book Man and His Symbols (1979), and the imagery and tension created by David Lynch in his films."

Kubrick on Freud

Stanley Kubrick discusses the storyline from his movie The Shining (1980).

Stanley Kubrick The Shining
"A story of the supernatural cannot be taken apart and analysed too closely. The ultimate test of its rationale is whether it is good enough to raise the hairs on the back of your neck. If you submit it to a completely logical and detailed analysis it will eventually appear absurd. In his essay on the uncanny, Das Unheimliche, Freud said that the uncanny is the only feeling which is more powerfully experienced in art than in life. If the genre required any justification, I should think this alone would serve as its credentials."