Dreams & Dreamers

Psychologists, busier than most at delving for the hidden meaning, suspect that movies, like other forms of fiction, are ready-made daydreams. Consciously and unconsciously the movies reflect, say the psychologists, the deep-rooted feelings of the national culture in which they are made. Last week movie fans could examine the results of an ambitious attempt by two psychologists to probe the celluloid daydreams of the U.S., Britain and France. Americans were not likely to find the results flattering.

In Movies, a Psychological Study (Free Press; $4), Drs. Martha Wolfenstein and Nathan Leites set down the distinctive plot patterns of U.S., British and French films. Readers may draw their own conclusions as to moral and emotional attitudes in each of the countries.

Excerpts:

The British. "The essential plot in British films is that of the conflict of forbidden impulses with conscience . . . British films evoke the feeling that danger lies in ourselves, especially in our impulses of destructiveness. In a cautionary way, they show what happens if these impulses break through, particularly where the weak become the victims. Thus they afford a catharsis at the same time that they demonstrate the value of defenses by showing the consequences bf their giving way . . .

"Self-accusation is prominent in British films, and may be evoked by wishes no less than by acts. Characters feel guilty when circumstances beyond their control produce fatalities coinciding with unconscious wishes . . . However, the pure in heart find that the authorities of this world and the next are their allies. The hero, temporarily distressed by a false charge, discovers that the police know all along that he is innocent, and are quietly working side by side with him."

The French. "In the major plot configuration of French films, human wishes are opposed by the nature of life itself. The main issue is not one of inner or outer conflicts in which we may win or lose, be virtuous or get penalized. It is a contest in which we all lose in the end, and the problem is to learn to accept it. There are inevitable love disappointments, the world is not arranged to collaborate with our wishes, people grow older, lovers become fathers, the old must give way to the young, and eventually everyone dies ... It is in keeping with this tendency that French films so often take as their central character an aging man [e.g., the late Raimu] . . .

"We must learn that the world is not arranged to fulfill our demands for justice any more than to satisfy our longings for happiness. Human agencies of justice are obtuse and inefficient, and there are no divine ones ... Where justice is done, it is made clear that this is a happy accident."

The Americans. "In American films . . . winning is terrifically important and always possible, though it may be a tough fight. The conflict is not an internal one; it is not our own impulses which endanger us, nor our own scruples that stand in our way. The hazards are all external, but they are not rooted in the nature of life itself. They are the hazards of a particular situation . . .

"The world, which is not effectively policed, does not need to be policed at all. The hero, the self-appointed investigator and agent of justice, is able to set things right independently. The world thus appears as a kind of workable anarchic arrangement where . . . life need not be nasty, brutish and short, at any rate not for anyone we care about . . .

"American film plots are pervaded by false appearances ... It is in false appearances that the forbidden wishes are realized ... In a false appearance the heroine is promiscuous, the hero is a murderer, the young couple carry on an illicit affair . . . This device makes it possible for us to eat our cake and have it, since we can enjoy the suggested wish-fulfillments without emphatic guilt . . . American films [contend] that we should not feel guilty for mere wishes."

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