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What is art but a mould to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself— life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.
Sigmund Freud, in his pivotal “Interpretation of Dreams” (1900), opened the 20th century with the theoretical base of the new science of psychoanalysis that was to have a profound impact on philosophical, psychological, scientific, and artistic development in the years to come. At about the same time, developments in technology brought about the motion picture, and with that, the most powerful and modern of all the arts, cinema art, which combines elements of literature, drama, journalism, photography, music, and dance, as well as manifold variants of sound and light. The motion picture not only delights and appalls our senses, titillates, amplifies, and gratifies our imagination, but at the same time it challenges our established defense mechanisms. In many ways, both Freud and the movies illuminated our concept of ourselves — Freud, in demonstrating the existence of a lively, vital unconscious, which was previously relegated to regions of darkness, and movies, which opened a new world to the imagination by projecting the fantasies of writers and filmmakers on the screens of millions of darkened theaters all over the world.
The unconscious, which is made manifest in everyday life is revealed most clearly by “free association.” Movies, like free association, tend to undo the work of repression and challenge the