Nineteen Nineteen

Jun 10

Notes from Hugh

The film grew out of a long friendship and collaboration with Michael Ignatieff. The first spark of the idea came from a suggestion from Michael that we put together a TV documentary series that would look at men who in some important way constituted themselves experts on women. The title of this series was to be ‘The Science of Desire’. And the first of these men was to be Freud. The point of entry, the window that would open onto him for the purpose of the film, would be the little-known case-history of his, "The Psychogenesis of A Case of Homosexuality in a Woman”.

This was Michael’s inspired suggestion, but as we worked together on the way this could be used as the basis for a film in the proposed series, documentary soon gave way to something as much reliant on our imaginations as on the facts as Freud presents them in his essay. We found ourselves writing a screenplay that was a reconstruction of both the dramatic encounter in Freud’s consulting room and the history of the times, the wider contexts, in which this was taking place. But to widen this screenplay farther and deeper we realised we needed a second narrative line, and we lit upon the idea of an encounter between two ex-patients of Freud seeking to recall and make sense of their experience of analysis with him. And of the historical as well as personal forces that had shaped their lives. So we built a feature film with layers of memory and history. The analyses came from 1919, a time when Freud was suffering many hardships and the world was emerging from one set of tragic crises to head into another - the events in the consulting room are poised, like the lives of our two protagonists, between the first world war, the Russian Revolution and Hitler coming to power.

The film was supported and financed in large part by the British Film Institute, in collaboration with Channel 4 TV. It was written in 1983-4 and filmed in 1984-5.

Synopsis

Nineteen Nineteen is a film about history, memory and psychoanalysis. The story is shaped by three central characters, of whom Freud is one. Through their lives and memories the film keeps raising a fundamental question about us all: can we say that we are shaped by our childhood experiences or the moment in history through which we find ourselves living?

Production: 1983
Released: 1984

Where to find this film:

DVD available, contact for download

Cast

Alexander Scherbatov - Paul Scofield
Sophie Rubin - Maria Schell
voice of Dr Sigmund Freud - Frank Finlay
Anna - Diana Quick
Young Sophie - Clare Higgins
Young Alexander - Colin Firth
Nina - Sandra Berkin
Alexander's sister - Jacqueline Dankworth
Sophie's father - Alan Tilvern
Child Alexander - Christopher Lahr
Child's nurse - Bridget Amies