THE HEAD
(1959; w/d Victor Trivas)

Title extremity ignored for bulk of picture (conscious mind sidelined during dream): focus instead on body + soul separated from proverbial mediator (played by L’Atalante’s similar spiritual-romantic medium, Michel Simon), enabling free play of id (not to mention narrative illogic).

Begins w/ lone Dr Ood (name à la id + "odd;" gutteral utterance irrational body-talk) arriving at home of Prof Abel (he Cain, his shadow across A’s nameplate good dr’s literal dark side: psychic "experimenter" entering mind, similar lab where hypotheses/possibilities worked out in order to solve problem), ends w/ couple leaving his dead body (issue resolved), action in btwn distance from one to other: how to put "Ood" to rest + bring lovers together (restore eros to abstract, modern world).

Abel’s hunchbacked nurse Irene (own crippled anima), whom he’s promised to heal, arrives simultaneously, aloof Ood (similarly defective animus, disembodied while eavesdropping thru window: mind already alienated from body, as is hers) recruited to help w/ Abel’s transplant experiments (facilitating passage from one realm to another [Ood’s name from parents’ wrecked ship the unsuccessful psg into adulthood, he psychic remnant of same]) + assist in Abel’s own "heart" operation (he earthy corpus of world requiring similar transplant + restoration); joins fellow doc Walter Burke (named for short + slightly twisted American character actor?), "I/rene’s" brother (not-I: she the Self to whom focus shifts once Abel sidelined) + architect of haute moderne house (civilized – to fault – mind, in which film takes place) + assistant Burt, who designed + operates automated nurse (robotic not-"I", he à la similar architect/soundalike Burke, invention the "subtle body" during sleep) before brain operation rendered him simple (mind at 1/2 power in dream), Ood revealing in end out-of-blue "Professor Hart/man" (heart-of-man God)’s reverse operation on him inflating his intellect to genius (sorrow of all humans, elevated above animal but not knowing why or how to deal w/ it).

In parallel story, sarcastic stripper Lily (Irene’s future body-confidence, the adult to her psychic adolescent; cf similar dancer alter ego Lili la Nuit in 1988 Shadow Dancing [both from Lilith, Adam's apocryphal willful 1st mate] + sim characters + milieu in contempo Bluebeard’s 10 Honeymoons, Hypnotic Eye, Indestructible Man, Gypsy, Screaming Mimi et al, as today’s Showgirls, Striptease, Carlito’s Way etc) berates her Lautrec-type artist boyfriend Paul for forsaking law studies (real world, he soul-in-decline to Ood’s in-ascension) against Judge-father (consciousness + moral authority)’s wishes; cross paths when Ood visits club + recognizes her as former patient Stella (fallen "star": another earthbound soul), for whom he performed plastic surgery (cf same-yr medical horror Eyes w/o a Face) after she poisoned husband (Ood betrayed by own anima – which situation Paul replaying daily – covering over hurt by recasting it as erotic spectacle [as men then + today are doing?]) + possibly unrequited lover (aka Mom, their later dance oedipal incursion for strangely unperturbed Paul).

When Abel’s heart donor dies (he sleeping body + 1st of 4 former selves to pass away) + Burke refuses to follow Ood’s decapitating fallback plan, Ood kills Burke (putting censorious consciousness out of commission in order to play out taboo-breaking unconscious imperatives: union w/t earlier-spied – dredged from unconscious – [not-the-]mother [not-]Lily) + preserves prof’s head (mind on automatic in sleep + fantasy re-enactment of severed Burke-consc’ss), planning next to correct Irene’s condition (healing Self by becoming not-the-father Abel, performing his intended function) by grafting her head onto Lily’s body (child's transference of mother-attraction to romantic Other).

When operation complete (girl advancing to in-body womanhood), Irene suitably ambivalent (head still at odds w/ body), her physical attraction to Paul (via Lily’s bod) at odds w/ psychological-intellectual attraction to Ood (leaving him for Paul à la Beauty/Psyche’s desertion of Beast/Amor, returning there likewise), Ood in turn turned on by combo (post-oedipal mother-projection, Burt’s discovery of Burke’s grave the retarded-genius self’s adolescent discovery of "own" body) tho still wary of her/body’s demands (intellectual’s [irrational] fear that world/physicality will drain rather’n enrich him).

As Irene/Lily ("I" restored to mythical "Stella/r" Self: ideal union of body, mind + soul) makes love to Paul (soul communing w/ soul), Ood sets flat on fire (incendiary effect of eros + threat of vestigial, stunting repression), prompting her to return to him + spurn rescuing Paul ("I’ll never get away from Ood"); latter’s joining forces w/ cops irrational’s uniting w/ rational twd end of dream same time Abel talks Burt into terminating him (disconnecting from vestigial consciousness, accommodated by now-ascendant Ood, who no longer needs Abel’s "Serum Z" [secret-of-life sperm, or sexual confidence traditionally passed on by father], for which he’d kept doctor alive), thwarting Ood+Irene’s attempt to leave in a.m. (complex’s escape into unconscious once uncovered in dream) when wounded Burt (body also nearly transcended in sleep) lets cops in (crawling twd wakefulness near dawn).

Defeated Ood takes heroic dive off balcony (as tho he thinks he’ll fly: mind now totally detached from physical reality/rationality) + falls to death (final descent into oblivion + resolution of complex, alienated ego truly "grounded"), Paul leading Irene away w/ reassurance she’s now "free."

A true Surrealist’s delight.