Secrets of a Soul (DVD)

A Psychoanalytic Thriller
Restored by the Munich Film Museum
and the F.W. Murnau Foundation

In the 1920s, film studios around the world sought to capitalize on the public's curiosity about the newborn science of psychoanalysis. In 1925,
Hans Neumann (of Ufa's Kulturfilm office) contacted members of Sigmund Freud's inner circle with a plan to make a dramatic film that explores the mystifying process of the interpretation of dreams. With the help of noted psychologists Karl Abraham and Hanns Sachs, and under the direction of G.W. Pabst (Pandora's Box), SECRETS OF A SOUL was completed.

Werner Krauss, who had played the deranged Dr. Caligari six years earlier, stars as a scientist who is tormented by an irrational fear of knives and the irresistible compulsion to murder his wife. Driven to the brink of madness by fantastic nightmares (designed by Ernö Metzner and photographed by Guido Seeber in a brilliant mix of expressionism and surrealism), he encounters a psychoanalyst who offers to treat the perplexing malady.

Includes illustrated film notes detailing the controversies surrounding the project

SECRETS OF A SOUL
(Geheimnisse einer Seele)
Germany 1926 B&W 75 Min.
Directed by G.W. Pabst
Produced by Hans Neumann
Screenplay by Karl Abraham,
Hans Neumann, Colin Ross, Hanns Sachs
Photographed by Robert Lach,
Curt Oertel, Guido Seeber
Music by Ekkehard Wölk
With Werner Krauss, Ruth Weyher,
Pavel Pavlov, Jack Trevor

Licensed by Transit Film and the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Stiftung

© 1996 Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung
Renewed by notice of intent to enforce a copyright
under the Uraguay Round Agreements Act
English intertitles, film notes © 2008 Kino International Corp.