Year: 2006
Duration: 01:38:48
Directed by: Bret Wood
Actors: Kristi Casey, David Weber, Zoe Cooper, Patrick Parker, David Sanders, Roger Foster, Jason Hodges, Steven Westdahl, Victor Lambert, Adam K. Thompson, J. Marcelo Banderas, Ted Manson, Daniel Thomas May, Jane Bass, Anne Towns
Language: English
Country: USA
Also known as:
Description:
Krafft-Ebing wrote and published several articles on psychiatry, but his book ‘Psychopathia Sexualis’ became his best-known work. Krafft-Ebing intended it as a forensic reference for doctors and judges and wrote in a high academic tone, noting in the introduction that he had “deliberately chosen a scientific term for the name of the book to discourage lay readers”. He also wrote “sections of the book in Latin for the same purpose”. Despite this, the book was highly popular with lay readers and was printed and translated many times.
“Wood has a strong, atmospheric visual style–something abundantly displayed in his work as editor, graphic artist and producer on the excellent Kino silent-movie DVD sets devoted to German expressionist masters F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, as well as American greats D.W. Griffith and Erich von Stroheim. “Psychopathia,” shot to look like a talkie color version of something noirish by Lang or Murnau, is as good-looking a film as its minimal budget allows. (There’s even a fine silhouette-play sequence that is obviously inspired by classic German animator Lotte Reiniger.) But the acting is often weak or overly florid, and the overall mood sometimes feverish and silly. Much of the film suggests pornography that doesn’t really turn you on.
One of Wood’s main points is that Krafft-Ebing, however progressive his intentions, fails modern standards because he regarded homosexuality as a curable disease–even though he was an advocate of decriminalizing it. But it’s hard to critique Krafft-Ebing, when you’re primarily using his case histories and not his life. Perhaps this movie would have been more powerful if it had been a “Kinsey”-style bio of the controversial doctor rather than a campy dramatization of his patients’ sex lives–or if it simply had more humor.”
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