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When in 1835 Henry Fox Talbot, frustrated because his sister could draw better than he could, got his own back by inventing the photographic negative, he started a revolution with incalculable consequences. As with so much technology, it is tempting to remember the story of the genie and the bottle, or the more sinister story of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. What began as a technological innovation proved to have vast psychological consequences.
In Moving Images, Andrea Sabbadini is concerned with one branch of that huge revolution, cinema, mostly European and from the second half of the 20th century. What he gives us in this book is essentially short introductions to a total of 23 movies, which he has grouped into six chapters: films about psychoanalysis itself, about prostitution, childhood, adolescence, love (of a peculiarly ambiguous kind - ‘Eros-with-Thanatos’) and voyeurism. The last chapter is nicely entitled: ‘Watching Voyeurs’, and the voyeuristic nature of cinema itself is a sub-theme throughout.
Sabbadini is well placed to write this book. A British psychoanalyst, with a long history of involvement with film, he has written a great deal of film criticism, was for many years Film Essay Editor for this journal and in 2001 was the founding spirit behind the establishment of the very successful European Psychoanalytic Film Festival, which has taken place biennially since then and which he still chairs. He has also led many presentations and psychoanalytic discussions of films at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. In particular, he has pioneered the idea of three-way discussions between members of the public, psychoanalysts and people involved in the actual making of movies, directors and actors.
Psychoanalysis and cinema were both born in the 1890s (rather nicely, the first panning shot, like the Oedipus complex, dates from ), and they have always been intrigued by one another. Striking similarities between dream and cinema have often been noted: film te