It’s very peculiar that despite Montgomery Clift and Susannah York starring in the film and the legendary John Huston behind the camera, Freud has never been legally available on either VHS or DVD in the UK. That’s now being addressed with this release, which gives a fresh outing for the unusual biopic.

Rather than covering the whole of Sigmund Freud’s life, the film concentrates on the years from 1885 to 1890 when he was developing his most famous theories. Against the backdrop of a medical establishment who believed mental problems either had a physiological cause or were just people pretending, Freud began to explore the idea of the unconscious and his ‘talking cure’, which sought to uncover memories the patient had suppressed and by unlocking them, cure the problems they faced (or at least that’s the overly simplified way it works in the film).

Freud faces the scorn of his colleagues who react badly to much of what he was to say, particularly when he starts to explore ideas of childhood sexuality and the Oedipus effect. The second half of the film concentrates on Freud’s relationship with one particular patient (Susannah York), who has hysterical paralysis. The doctor slowly begins to uncover the traumas and difficulties of her youth, hoping it will allow her to walk again.

There’s no doubt that the film oversimplifies psychological thinking and seems hopelessly outdated on that score in the present day. There are also plenty of modern day mental health professionals who aren’t big fans of Freud and who will take issue with the film’s glowing portrait of him (there’s no doubt Sigmund was as much a master of self-promotion and creating his own narrative, which the film buys into completely, as a master of the human mind). However it’s a fascinating attempt to mix a traditional biopic with more experimental elements, such as rather surreal dreams sequences.

As director John Huston’s voiceover suggests, it’s a film that’s less interested in Freud himself than the possibilities of unlocking the human mind and how that can be shown on screen – how can you portray the ideas of psychology on screen? As a result it plays fast and loose with history in favour of trying to uncover what Freud’s ideas mean. It is an interesting and entertaining movie, with a great central performance from Montgomery Clift. While Hollywood legend say John Huston tortures Clift on the set of the movie, asking more from him than was reasonable to expect, there little evidence for that.

However the alcoholic Clift was badly ailing when he made the movie, and his ill health caused so many delays and overruns that Universal eventually tried to sue him over it. After Freud in 1962, he didn’t make another movie until 1966’s The Defector, which he filmed just a few months before he died at the age of only 45. Considering his problems it’s almost ironic to have him playing Freud, with acting teacher Robert Lewis describing his death as ‘longest suicide in history’. Clift’s alcoholism, depression and self-destructive behaviour was largely due to his inability to come to terms with his sexuality (something that wasn’t uncommon at the time, especially as homosexuality was illegal), and while he spent a lot of time on the psychologist’s couch, it didn’t help.

The movie is also, incidentally, thought to be the first Hollywood production that touches explicitly on incest, which comes up when Susannah York’s character is slowly uncovering the reasons for her hysteria.

However while the movie is good, the DVD is less so, as it’s not in anamorphic widescreen. Instead it’s a letterboxed picture, meaning you have zoom in (and therefore lose picture quality) to fill a widescreen TV. While it saves money using a non-anamorphic master, it’s slightly unforgivable in the modern age.

Overall Verdict: A fascinating movie and Clift is always worth watching, but using a non-anamorphic print in 2012 is a big no-no.

Special Features:
None

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

Made in 1974, The Execution Of Private Slovik is, as the title suggests, about the execution of a soldier, in this case the only person put to death by the US military for desertion since the Civil War. Martin Sheen plays Eddie Slovik, who is initially ineligible for the draft due to his criminal past, but as the war drags on and the need for soldiers gets more desperate, gets called up.

While his wife tries to get him out of the army, he’s forced into a rifle unit, which may not be the best place for him as he doesn’t like gun. Once in Europe he quickly decides the front line isn’t the place for him, as he’s too terrified and becomes paralysed while under enemy fire. After a short time AWOL, which the army overlooks, he’s told he’ll be sent back to the frontline. Slovik refuses to go, saying he can only take an assignment back from the front line as he’s a bad frontline soldier and will just be a liability to his unit. His decision to make a stand leads to a court martial and the ultimate sentence.

It’s difficult to know how much you can trust The Execution Of Private Slovik. The book it’s based on took a broad view of the execution, using interviews with those who knew Slovik and who were involved in the execution to try and give an overall, balanced picture of how and why it happened. The film tries to mimic that with multiple voiceovers from all sorts of different people, but rather than making it seem like you’re getting a more objective look at what happened, it makes it more difficult to know if your being sold a line or not.

While the film largely seems to feel the execution was a tragic and unfair, it doesn’t do a great job of arguing that, largely because it ignores the ramification of quite a lot of the issues that it brings up, which suggest there was a lot more going on that the film wants to deal with. The movie certainly made me want to read the book it’s based on, partly because I felt I wasn’t getting the whole story from the film. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly no cheerleader for the death penalty, but Slovik’s case is a lot more complicated than it’s presented here.

However while it’s easy to argue over the film’s politics, for a TV movie it’s very effective and moving, with a great performance from Martin Sheen. The film undoubtedly make for an interesting couple of hours, even if you may come away feeling Slovik wasn’t quite as railroaded as the movie suggests.

Overall Verdict: Too simplistic politically, but it’s certainly an interesting subject made into a very watchable movie.

Special Features:
None

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

Romeo & Juliet but gone gay in a military academy. That’s what Private Romeo is and it’s just as intriguing yet problematic as that sounds. A group of lads at a military school are studying Shakespeare’s great romantic tragedy. However they don’t leave the Bard’s words behind when the bell rings, with Romeo & Juliet taking over their lives as two of the boys develop a forbidden love. However as rivalries grow this newfound love could develop into full blown tragedy.

It’s certainly an interesting idea, especially as the film keeps Shakespeare’s verse, but there are some major problems. Writer/director Alan Brown has chopped Shakespeare’s text down, added some modern music and social media touches and turned Juliet into a boy, but it never quite feels as if he makes the whole concept work. The film is great in fits and starts, with certain scenes working magnificently. The best bits are when the star crossed lovers are alone and Shakespeare’s passionate text mixes with more modern ideas about hidden gay romance to create some intense and absorbing scenes. However when it expands out to other characters it doesn’t always work.

By not changing any of the text – they don’t even bother to change Juliet to Julian, for example – it makes things rather unclear. There’s a rivalry between two groups of boys, but exactly why they hate each other is never properly explained. Indeed a lot about the military academy doesn’t make sense, such as why it only has eight students and no staff. Apparently the rest of the students have gone off somewhere for a few days, but it’s never really made clear what’s going on. If the set-up is going to make complete sense, the movie needs to infer a lot outside the original text, and it never quite manages that.

It’s a very good idea though and it’s difficult not to think it could have been made to work better than it does with a bit more thought, tweaking and perhaps by not being so afraid to add to or alter the original text. It’s not just in fitting the plot to a gay romance in a military school that feels a tad stretched, it’s also in how the Bard’s characters are played out. For example, in the original play Juliet’s nurse is a comic character, but when she’s transplanted onto a teenage boy she just becomes frustrating (although it tough to know whether that’s the fault of the concept or the acting). Likewise while the rivalries between the characters are clear in the play, it becomes murky here when removed from Verona and two feuding families. Clever conceptual Shakespeare often finds something new to base the tension around, but that doesn’t really work here.

The bits that don’t work are a great shame, because as mentioned some of it is great. When talking about secret love, it’s almost as if Shakespeare was deliberately writing about closeted gay romances and the central love story itself works extremely well – it’s just all the stuff around it that doesn’t quite work and which feels unclear and occasionally illogical. Private Romeo does try to cover this up by getting its buff young cast to wander round wearing only towels for as much of the running time as humanly possible, but this only helps up to a point!

If you want to see Shakespeare gone gay, take a look at the musical Were The World Mine, which dispenses with the language it knows won’t work but keeps the ideas of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to tell a more modern story. It shows how this sort of thing can be done well and may be a good place to get tips for the next person who wants to do gay Romeo & Juliet, as it’s definitely a good idea.

Overall Verdict: A modern, gay Romeo & Juliet is a fascinating idea and the love story at the play’s core definitely lends itself to the idea, but when Private Romeo tries to fit the rest of the plot into a military academy it has difficulties.

Special Features:
Audio Commentary
Deleted Scenes

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

Why do people in rural Argentina, a country that speaks Spanish, look like they just fell out of 19th Century France? The continental cultural melting pot always adds an extra layer of interest to South American movies, where various European cultures from all sorts of different eras butt up against indigenous cultures and the modern world. That’s in the background of The Last Summer Of La Boyita, a charming and somewhat brave film that takes a look at the ambiguity of gender, as seen through the eyes of children.

It’s summer and Jorgelina (Guadalupe Alonso) is a young girl looking to have fun, but who feels slightly like she’s been left behind by her older sister, who’s started puberty and no longer seems interested in playing with her. Jorgelina’s father then takes her off to his farm, where she meets up with the farm worker’s son, Mario, who she’s known for years. However while Mario is getting to the age where he’s expected to prove himself as a man, he’s undergoing unexpected changes which he wants to keep secret. Jorgelina realises it seems like Mario’s menstruating, but she also knows boys don’t do that. So what’s happening?

Last Summer Of La Boyita touches on all sorts of subjects, many of which rarely get explored on film. The film’s central theme is gender and how it expresses itself as children age. Looking at things through the eyes of a child, it shows just how complicated these things can be. Children’s ideas of gender are largely created by looking at the world around them, and that this can be more complicated than it first appears. Although we normally look at sex and gender as the same thing, they’re not, and this film looks at how they separate out, with several scenes focussing on how gender is often both wittingly and unwittingly an act of performance, especially in childhood when people are looking to fit in and seeing how they’re expected to act.

The movie doesn’t come to many conclusions, and indeed the film’s understandable but somewhat loose explanation of exactly what’s going on with Mario leaves a lot of questions open about how far gender is innate and how much a social creation – but as no one has come to any firm conclusions about that, it’s asking a bit much for a film to definitively sort it out for us.

The Last Summer… is an interesting counterpoint to the recently released Tomboy. In that movie a girl spends the summer as a boy, whilst everyone in Last Summer Of La Boyita believes Mario is a boy (including Mario himself) but things are a bit more complicated than that. Both films explore the boundary between our expectations of sex and gender, and the differences between them, particularly in childhood when our ideas about these things are formed. They’re also both wonderful films that are both challenging and rather bittersweet.

It’s a fascinating subject, but one most filmmakers shy away from due to the fact it’s potentially controversial. Last Summer Of La Boyita treats it sensitively, constructing a moving and beautifully put together movie around its central themes. And while some may feel Mario’s parents’ lack of attention to their child’s situation is unrealistic, anyone who’s watched a lot of ‘Bodyshock’ type documentaries will know that it’s actually not that untypical for those with a lack of education and who live apart from the modern, industrialised world.

The film may not be fast moving and some may be frustrated by the way it asks more questions than it answers, but it’s a style that’s thought provoking and draws you in to its world of childhood and the confusions that presents. The Last Summer Of La Boyita is a small film that’s well worth watching.

Overall Verdict: The ambiguity of gender is a subject that rarely gets treated well on film, but with Tomboy and Last Summer Of La Boyita, we’ve had an excellent double whammy in early 2012.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac