Synopsis
Presentation of this variety of obsession characterized by the fear of an idea, an object or even a specific act. Collection of observations on the invasion of the patient’s field of consciousness by a sort of monstrous desire, on the resulting terror, and finally on the rarity of the passage to action. (Description from the libraries of the Université de Montréal)
A word from Tënk
Phobie d’impulsion is one of the many films by Éric Duvivier dealing with psychiatric disorders, a subject that provided him with an open field conducive to aesthetic experimentation. The film is produced by the pharmaceutical company Roche, a Swiss-based company that, notably, synthesized Valium in 1963. This happy and curious harmony between the pharmaceutical industry (other films will be produced, notably by Sandoz, Delagrange Laboratories, etc.), the medical field (the film is advised by Dr. Didier-Jacques Duché, psychiatrist and professor at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital), and the field of cinematic experimentation translates here into a film with strong surrealist overtones (we glimpse the tomb of the Facteur Cheval), strong cinephile references (Jules et Jim, Nosferatu) with a look at the crude violence of the illness (one thinks throughout of scenes from Italian gialli), but also at the wounds of history (one sequence seems to have been filmed in Oradour-Sur-Glane, martyred city of WWII).
An unclassifiable, fascinating, and disturbing object, Phobie d’impulsion will one day find a place of choice in the history of French post-war cinema. It only remains to be seen which one.
André Habib
Professor · Université de Montréal
Department of Art History, Cinema, and Audiovisual Media
and Editor-in-Chief of Hors champ
