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MOVIE REVIEW
24 September 1986
New York Times
SCREEN: MEMORIES OF FREUD IN 'NINETEEN NINETEEN'
By NINA DARNTON
''NINETEEN NINETEEN,'' which opens today at the Film Forum 1, is an
ambitious and fascinating film about Sophie Rubin and Alexander Scherbatov,
supposedly the last surviving patients of Sigmund Freud. Hugh Brody, who
is the film's director and co-writer, and Michael Ignatieff created
characters based on two of Freud's case histories, invented names for them
and set them in Vienna in 1970.
Sophie, a Viennese Jew living in New York, flies back to Vienna to find
Alexander, a White Russian aristocrat whom she has seen in a television
interview discussing his analysis. Together in his heavily textured
Eastern European apartment filled with relics of another era, they relive
their pasts. They discuss their personal lives, the cataclysmic world
history that intruded into their psyches, and the famous psychoanalyst in
whose office at 19 Berggasse they sought peace - or perhaps happiness - or
maybe merely understanding.
These are two solitary people, played with remarkable sensitivity and
depth by Maria Schell and Paul Scofield, caught in webs of unhappiness
they are incapable of severing. They were analyzed by Freud, whom the film
treats visually as other movies deal with Jesus. We never see his face. We
only hear his voice speaking to his patients.
Sophie's great and only love was Anna, another woman. Alexander was
incapable of feeling sexual desire for the only woman he ever loved and
was attracted only to vulgar women he despised. Sophie ran away from Anna
(and from her analysis) and moved to New York, thereby escaping the
Holocaust in which her family perished. Alexander married the woman he
loved and suffered through 20 years of self-hatred because he never
desired her. Both remained emotionally crippled, lonely people. Did Freud
help them or hurt them? And beyond that, was their unhappiness really the
result of their personal histories, or were they also victims of the
shattering historical period in which they lived - the Russian Revolution,
two World Wars, anti-Semitism, Marxism, Fascism?
These are profound questions, difficult for psychology and philosophy to
answer, and problematic for a film even to ask. But Mr. Brody has evolved
a distinctive style with which to address them. With a technique that
relies partly on flashbacks and partly on documentary footage he creates a
montage of impressions, using the camera to capture the very process of
unlocking the unconscious.
Mr. Brody seems to have found a cinematic language for the process of
thought and memory. He shifts from color to black and white, as people
often do in dreams. By inserting documentary footage, he suggests the
intrusion of historical reality into the personal world. ''He didn't cure
me,'' Alexander says to Sophie. ''Cure you of what?'' she answers. ''Of
the Russian Revolution? Of life?''
Paul Scofield and Maria Schell give brilliant, finely tuned performances.
Mr. Scofield's character is as detailed, as painstakingly woven as the
intricate Oriental carpets and heavy brocades in Freud's office.
Maria Schell is, quite simply, wonderful - a pleasure to watch. She is
still beautiful, with searching sad eyes and the kind of warmth and wisdom
that Simone Signoret often projected. Her intelligence, her regret, her
need to find the forces which shaped her and her compassion are
beautifully drawn.
This film is not for everyone. But for those interested in the questions
it poses and in a cumulative, but ultimately powerful use of film as a
medium to touch the mind as well as the heart, it is well worth the trip. |
