The Mask

By dint of its name The Mask promises, and is, a psychoanalyst's treasure trove, And it is. A character named “Dr. Neumann,” an analyst, assures the severely two-sided protagonist, who survives by day and cavorts in a mask at night, that the object's transformative virtue is merely a “metaphor.” The bearded and bespectacled doctor's advice to keep a healthy, calm, diurnal view of things does not square well with the fidgety protagonist.

The story relates the travails of a timid bankteller who suffers untold frustration and intimidation wherever he goes. He takes solace in a studio apartment housing a faithful terrier, a television set, and a collection of cartoon videotapes. But even these pleasures are thwarted by a shrewish super, who demands quiet. One day, a vivacious, lip-puckering blonde, a nightclub entertainer, makes advances to him while positioning on his desk a handbag containing a hidden camcorder that transmits the lay of the bank to her mafiosi allies who are planning a heist. Preparing to see her in the evening, the hero encounters two slovenly car repairmen who consign his subcompact to their dingy shop and give him a lender Studebaker. After the hero is barred access to the Coco Bongo club where the blonde croons and dances, en route home, the car collapses on a bridge. When, mired in chagrin and peering over the bridge in darkness, he spots a strange wooden mask floating amidst a pile of flotsam, life begins to change. A bungling Jekyll becomes a trickster-gogo-dancer Hyde. As he enacts revenge on his enemies, the entire city turns into a playground for the battle of good and evil. The unlikely hero finally wins his true love. In the last shots the ravishing blonde embraces him in broad daylight, on the very bridge where his metamorphosis had begun.

The film may claim the interest of readers of The Psychoanalytic Review on at least three counts. First, the Manichean theme and its hilarious plotline of reversal shows how fantasies enable a “cure” to d