Abstract

MAYA GONZALEZ, José Antonio. “More Fascinating than a Psychoanalytical Drama”: Crime, Insanity and Subjectivity in The Man without a Face (1950). Secuencia [online]. 2019, n.104, e1612.  Epub May 07, 2019. ISSN 2395-8464.  https://doi.org/10.18234/secuencia.v0i104.1612.

This study analyzes the ideas and perceptions of criminal insanity in the film The Man without a Face (1950), and its reception among the educated classes in the mid-20th century. I consider that the film is perhaps one of the first to examine the murderer’s complex tangle of subconscious motivations of the murderer from psychoanalytical discourse. A look at the scientific, intellectual and cinematographic discourses of the era highlights the circulation of Freudian knowledge in broad spheres of Mexico City culture. I argue that Bustillo’s film promotes a psychological explanation through which he sought to evoke intrigue, suspicion and fear regarding the depths of the criminal’s mood, but also inserted psychoanalysis as to tool to explore the murderer’s subjective motivations.

Keywords : psychoanalysis; cinema; insanity; subjectivity; murderer.

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