Reviews (1)
Passage à l'acte (= acting out), i.e., a psychoanalytic category for describing a patient's behavior that replaces the memory of a traumatic experience, with actions replacing the recall of trauma that cannot be admitted into consciousness. Arnold, as the best psychoanalyst, examines the Hollywood psyche to uncover what it is running away from. In doing so, he liberates the film from its lack of recognition of itself and its history. In Arnold's hands, the film image and sequence from a certain scene are freed from the singular identity attributed to them by the script, ideology, culture, editing style, narration, etc., of Hollywood and America (not only) at that time, and can openly reveal all repressed traumas of suppressed choices that stood before the director, editor, screenwriter, producer, and viewer during the creation/perception of the film. Subversion is injected into the heart of every movie frame.
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