Hypnosis, hysteria, moody B/W photography, beards and a haunted Montgomery Clift combine in a fascinating movie.

I have seen this film a few times and each time I appreciate it a little more. It concentrates on the years in Sigmund Freud's life around 1890 when he made his groundbreaking studies on the nature of sexuality.

Although I had the impression Freud was more of a solo act, the film shows that after a falling out with the head of the Vienna Hospital, Dr. Theodore Meynert (Eric Portman),friend and mentor Dr. Joseph Breuer (Larry Parks) played a big role in his discoveries.

As Freud deals with one intriguing case after another, he encounters Cecily Koertner, played by a sexy Susannah York, who has a disturbing father hang-up and enough problems for a battalion of pioneering psychiatrists. This was relatively early in Susannah's career and she just about steals the show. Sadly she is gone now, a bit young at 72.

Montgomery Clift's performance has a quality of suffering that he didn't have to fake. Director John Huston pieced together Clift's performance because the actor's life was pretty well out of control by this stage. However, a recent documentary, "Making Montgomery Clift", gives another side to the story with more blame levelled at Huston for the problematic production. That aside, what a presence Monty still had, he was probably the only actor who ever remotely intimidated Brando.

Insights come when Freud deals with the troubled Carl von Schlossen who has savagely attacked his father. Schlossen was played by David McCallum a few years before "Man from Uncle" fame. When Freud deduces the attack was over the younger Schlossen's jealousy of his mother, Freud is shocked into the realisation that his own infantile feelings for his mother may well have gone beyond love of her strudel.

Huston approached all this as a mystery thriller, especially when the treatment of Cecily reveals to Freud that just about all repressed emotional disturbances are based on conflicted feelings toward mum and dad.

Jerry Goldsmith's score helps drive the film; it's as atonal as they come, but it grows on you. Again, like many of the stars, it was early in the career of the great film maestro.

The film mixes in dream sequences with plenty of symbolism reminiscent of the films of Ingmar Bergman. In fact the whole thing has a Bergmanesque quality. And talk about the id and the ego, John Huston delivers God-like narration at key points.

Huston made many great films as well as a couple of duds, however "Freud" was a bold idea; it's challenging, but beautifully made and deserves to be ranked among his best.

Huston does very good work here, using a fine script in presenting the story of Freud not as a standard biography, but concentrating only on his initial work in examining the effect of the subconscious mind on conscious (though perhaps involuntary) actions - an idea believed preposterous at the time. The narrative is presented essentially as a psychological detective story, as Freud tries to discover the root causes of one patient's multiple afflictions and aberrant behavior, none of which has any physical cause. The film uses depictions of memories, dreams, thoughts as visual clues - all progressively revealing more - to lead us (and Freud) steadily closer to the underlying truth in the case, as well as in other areas disturbing him.

The opening and closing narration (by Huston) is effective, though the occasional narration he does as the story progresses bothered me a little; it was as if they felt there was something missing from the film which had to be explained in voiceover, and it also pulled me out of the story momentarily. Probably it would have been more effective if Clift (rather than Huston) had done the narration, from Freud's point of view, in the body of the film.

The film, which maintains a serious, fiercely somber atmosphere throughout (similar to The Elephant Man though perhaps more so here),does not proceed with any real speed - you'll need to stay with it; and the dark, harsh style of photography and music (while effective) might be difficult for some viewers. You need not agree with Freud's concluding theories (many of which are not held in particularly high regard today) in order to recognize the importance and validity of his primary methods and pioneering work in what was then a highly ridiculed field. 8 of 10

It's always interesting to see how the art of cinema... a form of expression which much too often suffers under an audience and financial backers who demand simple entertainment, easily taken in and processed... deals with topics that are more complex and intricate than can be explained to the common movie-goer in a limited space of time, that being between an hour and a half and about three hours(in recent years, there has been a return of the longer running times... for better or for worse, and with ranging success). Psycho-analysis was also dealt with by the master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock... in Spellbound, in 1945. He, as Huston does here, gave it a fair treatment, though oversimplifying it some. What's interesting is that Huston, while his film seems to be the lesser known, is actually the better representation of the subject(though, mind you, not necessarily the better film). This deals with Freud and his discoveries, following him for half a decade, giving what may be a fairly accurate account of his first work with hypnosis and psycho-analysis. We see a few of his patients, and the film focuses on him as he works on one particular patient... whose symptoms strongly resemble some he, to a (considerably) lesser degree has himself, and we experience how he develops and presents(and is met with strong protest and outrage, as he indeed was in real life) one theory which would become a cornerstone of his psychological writings and his view on man. I will not reveal what it is here, but anyone should know what he believed before watching this, since it is a rather provocative idea(and it is somewhat glorified in this film... Freud comes across as more of a misunderstood genius than the hopeful man(who did yield some important and interesting discoveries) that he was in real life). The cinematic values of the film are fine... the pace could have been more consistent(it should be noted that I watched a cut that was 120 minutes, not 139, long),and there are one or two scenes which seem obsolete, but there's little else that stands out, neither positively nor negatively. The film's score is dramatic, but that is not uncommon for a movie of that period. There are several nice touches in the film, in regards to who it is about... among them the Freudian slip in a scene with a patient. I recommend this to anyone interested in psychology, regardless of their view on Freud... it's interesting to watch, and fairly nicely done, to boot. Just keep in mind that it's neither a documentary nor a proper biographical film. 7/10