cinematic superimpositions, symbolic imagery of razors and knives, and menacing shadows create a frightening world. A professor (Werner Krauss) is driven into a state of terror by strange intense nightmares accompanied by compulsive thoughts of murdering his wife. Based on an actual patient treated (and cured) by Sigmund Freud, and made with the collaboration of Freud’s colleagues Karl Abraham and Hanns Sachs, is the first time in film that psychoanalysis was represented as a treatment for mental illness. The silent classic will be screened in an archive film print with English intertitles and a musical score. Introduction and post-film discussion will be led by Anne Nesbet, Associate Professor of Film Studies at UC Berkeley.

All Cinema on the Couch movies screen at 7 p.m. at the JCC's Kanbar Hall (3200 California Street), and they're all gloriously free with a reservation (which you can make by calling 415-292-1233). Upcoming films are Hitchcock's Spellbound (April 4) and the Sherlock Holmes classic The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (May 9), so even if you can't make it tonight, you'll still have chances galore to enjoy on-screen psychoanalysis without ever having to hear Matt LeBlanc sing again.

Image from Secrets of a Soul from The Freud Museum

Secrets of a Soul