Secrets of a Soul

It’s arguable that the 1920’s were a heyday for public acceptance and fascination with psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud’s The Ego and the Id was published in 1923 and already psychoanalytical societies, training institutes and clinics had been founded, and were expanding, around the world. The Surrealist art movement was both a reaction to and extension of Freud’s theories, with an emphasis on dream-like imagery filled with potential symbols of unconscious desires. German filmmakers were the vanguard for applying all of the above to movies; the ’20s German Expressionist movement portrayed hidden impulses bubbling to the surface by way of set design, costumes, acting and screenplays in films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Metropolis (1927).

G. W. Pabst’s Secrets of a Soul tackled the methodology of psychoanalysis head on (pardon the pun). In Secrets, the use of psychoanalysis is the plot, and while not a great or satisfying film by any measure, it set the tone for several decades’ worth of similarly themed films.

Werner Krauss (of Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) portrays scientist Martin Fellman, happily married (Ruth Weyher). Though childless, the couple seems on an even keel until two unrelated incidents: a neighbor is murdered with a knife, and Martin’s wife’s cousin, a virile world explorer, is coming to visit, having forwarded an exotic idol. Secrets is directed at first as if we, the audience, are expected to think Martin is the murderer. Martin then has a nightmare filled with symbolic meanings pertaining to his life, culminating with a scene in which he stabs his wife with a knife—something that he later nearly does when awake.

Martin eventually meets up with a friendly psychoanalyst, Dr. Orth (played by Pavel Pavlov!), who helps decipher Martin’s dream imagery and, in too-tidy a manner, drills down to a forgotten childhood experience which laid the groundwork for Martin’s psychosis. Secrets then ends on a sentimental and unconvincingly happy note.

Pabst’s surrealistic dream sequence in Secrets is what the film’s known for, and it does have some creepy and audacious moments—it’s worth the price of admission. Despite some too-obvious phallic imagery, though, Secrets‘ dream sequence doesn’t go to the weird depths suggested by the title of the film. For that, viewers would have to wait three more years for the films of Luis Buñuel (starting with Buñuel’s and Salvador Dali’s Un Chien Andalou, 1929)—and many decades more for the films of David Lynch (Eraserhead, 1976, and Blue Velvet, 1986).

Another relative of Secrets is the work of Alfred Hitchcock, specifically Blackmail (1929, only three years after Secrets) and Spellbound (1945). Hitchcock was not only influenced by the work of the German Expressionists, he worked in Germany at UFA (the studio which produced Secrets) in the ’20s, art directing, writing screenplays, and working as an assistant director. This period, rich in experimentation and artistic flourishing, may have been the inspiration for a life-long implementation of surrealism in his otherwise mainstream films.

In Blackmail, the protagonist has murdered a rapist with a knife and, in a bravura, experimental sound sequence, she hears a gossipy neighbor talk nonchalantly about the murder, with the word “knife” played increasingly louder on the soundtrack as the sequence progresses. Spellbound shows its influences even more strongly. Like Secrets, it makes the use of psychoanalysis the plot and, also like Secrets, has at its center a symbol-filled nightmare sequence (designed by Dali), which needs to be deciphered and understood before psychic healing, and a happy ending, can take place.

The producers of Secrets tried and failed to get Freud’s stamp of approval on the film. Colleagues Karl Abraham and Hanns Sachs helped create and promote the film, though, as a means of educating the public on the benefits of psychoanalysis. The Kino DVD edition of Secrets of a Soul has some fascinating notes on this collaboration, as well as a fine piano score by Ekkehard Wölk. Note, though, that the Kino edition is 22 minutes shorter than the film’s original release print. The longer version may no longer exist.

—Michael R. Neno, 2017 Jun 14