My Favorite Mental Illness Movies
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- DirectorIngmar BergmanStarsVictor SjöströmBibi AnderssonIngrid ThulinAfter living a life marked by coldness, an aging professor is forced to confront the emptiness of his existence."Recently I've had the weirdest dreams, as if I must tell myself something I won't listen to when I'm awake." -"What's that?"
"That I'm dead. Although I am alive." - DirectorHerk HarveyStarsCandace HilligossFrances FeistSidney BergerAfter a traumatic accident, a woman becomes drawn to a mysterious abandoned carnival."I don't belong in the world, that's what it is. Something separates me from other people. Everywhere I turn, there's something blocking my escape. I can't fight anymore. I don't know what's real anymore."
- DirectorBilly WilderStarsWilliam HoldenGloria SwansonErich von StroheimA screenwriter develops a dangerous relationship with a faded film star determined to make a triumphant return."You don't yell at a sleepwalker - he may fall and break his neck. That's it: she was still sleepwalking along the giddy heights of a lost career. The dream she had clung to so desperately had enfolded her.
- DirectorLaurence OlivierStarsLaurence OlivierJean SimmonsJohn LauriePrince Hamlet struggles over whether or not he should kill his uncle, whom he suspects has murdered his father, the former king."To be, or not to be... that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune... or take arms against a sea of troubles... and by opposing, end them?"
- DirectorNanni MorettiStarsNanni MorettiLaura MoranteJasmine TrincaA psychoanalyst and his family go through profound emotional trauma when their son dies in a scuba-diving accident."I'm fine. Work's going well. I'm fine. Even if I still think about suicide, and feel that I may well try again. Next time, I might actually succeed... How is it you can live normally and still consider killing yourself? How can that be?"
- DirectorAlexander MackendrickStarsBurt LancasterTony CurtisSusan HarrisonPowerful but unethical Broadway columnist J.J. Hunsecker coerces unscrupulous press agent Sidney Falco into breaking up his sister's romance with a jazz musician."You're 19 years old. Just a kid, and you're falling apart at the seams. It's the truth, and the truth hurts. To give credit where credit is due, Susie, that body of yours deserves a better fate than tumbling off some terrace."
- DirectorFritz LangStarsPeter LorreEllen WidmannInge LandgutWhen the police in a German city are unable to catch a child-murderer, other criminals join in the manhunt."It's there all the time, driving me out to wander the streets, following me, silently, but I can feel it there. It's me, pursuing myself! I want to escape, to escape from myself! But it's impossible."
- DirectorAlfred HitchcockStarsAnthony PerkinsJanet LeighVera MilesA Phoenix secretary embezzles $40,000 from her employer's client, goes on the run and checks into a remote motel run by a young man under the domination of his mother."People always call a madhouse "someplace", don't they? -"Put her in someplace!".
What do you know about caring? Have you ever seen the inside of one of those places? The laughing, and the tears, and those cruel eyes studying you? My mother... THERE?" - DirectorMartin ScorseseStarsLeonardo DiCaprioEmily MortimerMark RuffaloTeddy Daniels and Chuck Aule, two US marshals, are sent to an asylum on a remote island in order to investigate the disappearance of a patient, where Teddy uncovers a shocking truth about the place."You know, this place makes me wonder...
Which would be worse - to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?" - DirectorRobert RedfordStarsDonald SutherlandMary Tyler MooreJudd HirschThe accidental death of the older son of an affluent family deeply strains the relationships among the bitter mother, the good-natured father and the guilt-ridden younger son."It was like... falling into a hole. It keeps getting bigger and bigger and you can't escape. All of a sudden, it's inside... and you're the hole. You're trapped. And it's all over. It's not really scary, except when you think back on it. 'Cause you know what you were feeling."
- DirectorGrigoriy KozintsevStarsInnokentiy SmoktunovskiyMikhail NazvanovElza RadzinaAfter the death of the King of Denmark - Hamlet's father - his brother Claudius ascends the throne, who takes his widow Gertrude as his wife. Hamlet meets the ghost of his father and learns that he was killed by Claudius."I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this most excellent canopy, the air, appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours."
- DirectorCharles ChaplinStarsCharles ChaplinClaire BloomNigel BruceA fading comedian and a suicidally despondent ballet dancer must look to each other to find purpose and hope in their lives."The trouble is you won't fight! You've given in, continually dwelling on sickness and death. But there's something just as inevitable as death, and that's life. Think of the power that's in the universe, moving the earth, growing the trees. That's the same power within you if you only have courage and the will to use it!"
- DirectorMartin BrestStarsAl PacinoChris O'DonnellJames RebhornA prep school student needing money agrees to "babysit" a blind man, but the job is not at all what he anticipated."You fucked up, alright! So everybody does! Get on with your life, would ya?"
-"What life? I got no life! I'm in the dark, here! You understand? I'm in the dark!" - DirectorMilos FormanStarsJack NicholsonLouise FletcherMichael BerrymanIn the Fall of 1963, a Korean War veteran and criminal pleads insanity and is admitted to a mental institution, where he rallies up the scared patients against the tyrannical nurse."The last time I seen my father, he was blind and diseased from drinking. And every time he put the bottle to his mouth, he didn't suck out of it, it sucked out of him until he shrunk so wrinkled and yellow even the dogs didn't know him."
- DirectorAlfred HitchcockStarsHenry FondaVera MilesAnthony QuayleIn 1953, an innocent man named Christopher Emanuel "Manny" Balestrero is arrested after being mistaken for an armed robber."She's living in another world from ours. A frightening landscape that could be... on the dark side of the moon. You're there, and the children are there, but not the way you are. She knows she's in a nightmare. But it doesn't help her to know. She can't get out."
- DirectorFrancis Ford CoppolaStarsGene HackmanJohn CazaleAllen GarfieldA paranoid, secretive surveillance expert has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that the couple he is spying on will be murdered.[from dream sequence] "He'll kill you if he gets a chance. I'm not afraid of death. I am afraid of murder."
- DirectorAlfred HitchcockStarsIngrid BergmanGregory PeckMichael ChekhovA psychiatrist protects the identity of an amnesia patient accused of murder while attempting to recover his memory."Oh, you are a fine one to talk! You have a guilt complex and amnesia and you don't know if you are coming or going from somewhere, but Freud is hooey! This you know!"
- DirectorLev KulidzhanovStarsGeorgiy TaratorkinInnokentiy SmoktunovskiyTatyana BedovaRaskolnikov, an impoverished ex-law student, kills an old pawnbroker and her sister, perhaps for money, perhaps to prove a theory about being above the law. He comes to police attention through normal procedures (he was the victim's client), but his outbursts make him the prime suspect of the clever Porfiry. Meanwhile, life swirls around Raskolnikov: his mother and sister come to the city followed by two older men seeking his sister's hand; he meets a drunken clerk who is then killed in a traffic accident, and he falls in love with the man's daughter, Sonia, a young prostitute. She urges him to confess, promising to follow him to Siberia. Will he accept responsibility?"You had the strength to go beyond what's permissible. You have laid hands on yourself. You have destroyed a life... your own life. That makes no difference. But you won't be able to hold on. if you remain alone you'll go out of your mind just like I did."
- DirectorBernard QueysanneStarsJacques SpiesserLudmila MikaëlA 25-year-old male student in Paris becomes indifferent to the world around him, and subsequently feels a strong sense of alienation and hopelessness."You discover (without surprise) that something is wrong, that you don't know how to live and that you never will. Something has broken. You no longer feel some thing which until then fortified you. The feeling of your existence, the impression of belonging to or being in the world, is starting to slip away from you."
- DirectorAkira KurosawaStarsTakashi ShimuraNobuo KanekoShin'ichi HimoriA bureaucrat tries to find meaning in his life after he discovers he has terminal cancer."When I was a child, I nearly drowned in a pond. It feels the exact same way now: Everything's going black, I writhe and thrash around, but there's nothing to hold on to... except you. My son is somewhere far away - just as my mom and pop were when I was drowning in that pond. Remembering it now, it's even more painful than it was then."
- DirectorMartin ScorseseStarsLeonardo DiCaprioMatt DamonJack NicholsonAn undercover cop and a mole in the police attempt to identify each other while infiltrating an Irish gang in South Boston."Look, I'm having panic attacks, alright? The other night I thought I was having a fucking heart attack. I puked in a trash barrel on the way over here. I haven't slept for fucking weeks."
- DirectorNicholas RayStarsJames DeanNatalie WoodSal MineoA rebellious young man with a troubled past comes to a new town, finding friends and enemies."If I had one day when I didn't have to be all confused and I didn't have to feel that I was ashamed of everything. If I felt that I belonged someplace. You know?... I don't know what to do anymore. Except maybe die."
- DirectorGeorge CukorStarsCharles BoyerIngrid BergmanJoseph CottenTen years after her aunt was murdered in their London home, a woman returns from Italy in the 1880s to resume residence with her new husband. His obsessive interest in the home rises from a secret that may require driving his wife insane."Real tragedy has touched your life - and very deeply. But now there is a chance to forget tragedy, my child. Take it. Free yourself from the past - and forget your singing, too, for a while. Happiness is better than art."
- DirectorAndrei TarkovskyStarsNatalya BondarchukDonatas BanionisJüri JärvetA psychologist is sent to a station orbiting a distant planet in order to discover what has caused the crew to go insane."When I sleep, I know no fear, no hope, no trouble, no bliss, Blessings on him he who invented sleep. The common coin that purchases all things, the balance that levels shepherd king, fool and wise man. There is only one bad thing about sound sleep. They say it closely resembles death."
- DirectorBilly WilderStarsRay MillandJane WymanPhillip TerryThe desperate life of a chronic alcoholic is followed through a four-day drinking bout."It's like the doctor was just telling me - delirium is a disease of the night.
Good night." - DirectorRobert WieneStarsWerner KraussConrad VeidtFriedrich FeherHypnotist Dr. Caligari uses a somnambulist, Cesare, to commit murders."You all think I'm insane! it isn't true, it's the director who's insane! He is Caligari... Caligari... Caligari!"
- DirectorBilly WilderStarsJack LemmonShirley MacLaineFred MacMurrayA Manhattan insurance clerk tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue."The mirror... it's broken."
"Yes, I know. I like it that way. Makes me look the way I feel." - DirectorElia KazanStarsVivien LeighMarlon BrandoKim HunterDisturbed Blanche DuBois moves in with her sister in New Orleans and is tormented by her brutish brother-in-law while her reality crumbles around her."I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic. I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things. I don't tell truths. I tell what ought to be truth."
- DirectorIngmar BergmanStarsHarriet AnderssonGunnar BjörnstrandMax von SydowRecently released from a mental hospital, Karin rejoins her emotionally disconnected family in their island home, only to slip from reality as she begins to believe she is being visited by God."All of a sudden, emptiness turns into abundance, and desperation turns into life. It's like a temporary death's sentence strike."
- DirectorAlfred HitchcockStarsLaurence OlivierJoan FontaineGeorge SandersA self-conscious woman juggles adjusting to her new role as an aristocrat's wife and avoiding being intimidated by his first wife's spectral presence."You've nothing to stay for. You've nothing to live for really, have you?
Look down there. It's easy, isn't it? Why don't you? Why don't you? Go on. Go on." - DirectorLouis MalleStarsMaurice RonetLéna SkerlaYvonne ClechDepressed Alain Leroy leaves the clinic where he was detoxified. He meets friends, acquaintances and women, trying to find a reason to continue living. Will this help him?"The thing is... I can't reach out with my hands. I can't touch things. And when I do touch things, I feel nothing. To leave without having touched anything."
- DirectorJean-Pierre MelvilleStarsAlain DelonFrançois PérierNathalie DelonAfter professional hitman Jef Costello is seen by witnesses his efforts to provide himself an alibi drive him further into a corner."There is no greater solitude than that of the samurai, unless it is that of the tiger in the jungle... perhaps..."
- DirectorElia KazanStarsJames DeanRaymond MasseyJulie HarrisTwo brothers in 1910s California struggle to maintain their strict, Bible-toting father's favor as an old secret about their long-absent mother comes to light."It's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world. Don't ask me, even if you could, how I know that. I just know it. It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel. Maybe you didn't mean it that way, but it's true. You never gave him your love."