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While reading this book, I kept pondering the question of who would be the best audience for it. The author, Andrea Sabbadini, is a psychoanalyst who is extremely knowledgeable about film, especially classic European movies. His stated goal for the book is to offer discussion of films from a psychoanalytic perspective and in the process of doing so, to use the films in order to illustrate a number of psychoanalytic ideas and to convey a sense of what analytic work consists. Anyone who is familiar with many of the movies discussed in this book and understands psychoanalytic and psychodynamic theory would be the ideal audience for it. However, even knowledgeable psychoanalysts without having seen these films would find it difficult to relate to the book. Similarly, students of cinema who may have seen the films mentioned, would probably get lost in the erudite psychoanalytic discussion presented in this book. Unfortunately, that would seem to leave a very small audience for this book. However, I do see an important value for it which I will discuss at the conclusion of this review.
This 140-page soft-covered book has six chapters which I will list below with two of the several movies discussed in each chapter.
Chapter 1: “A Young Profession: Films on Psychoanalysis”
Spellbound
Il Postino
Chapter 2: “…and the Oldest One: Films on Prostitution”
Nights of Cabiria
Belle de Jour
Chapter 3: “The Young Ones: Films on Children”
The Spirit of the Beehive