Head Against the Wall

A rebel without a cause, young François Gérane (Jean-Pierre Mocky) will find himself committed to an asylum after an intense confrontation with his authoritarian father. Desperate, he will look for ways to escape, eventually discovering a reason to stay alive and keep his sanity in the face of a girl (Anouk Aimée).

Putting his ability to create an otherworldly atmosphere in otherwise perfectly ordinary settings to the test in his first full-length fiction film, Franju directs this Kafkaesque nightmare with the stylistic clarity of a silent cinema master, permeated by the melancholy that would later haunt his entire oeuvre.

An ancestor to Samuel Fuller’s "Shock Corridor" (1963) and Milos Forman’s "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975), "Head Against the Wall" isn’t just an early, realistic depiction of the claustrophobic atmosphere dominating mental asylums at the time, but it’s a heartrending rendition of the battle between traditional and modern psychiatry, reason and insanity, freedom and oppression. Th.P.

la tete contre les murs / το κεφάλι στον τοίχο... από NyxtesPremieras

Εναλλακτικοί τίτλοι / Alternative titles: Head Against the Wall / La tête contre les murs

Σκηνοθεσία / Director: Georges Franju

Σενάριο / Screenwriter: Jean-Pierre Mocky

Φωτογραφία / DoP: Eugen Schüfftan

Μουσική / Music: Maurice Jarre

Μοντάζ / Editor: Suzanne Sandberg

Ηθοποιοί / Principal Cast: Jean-Pierre Mocky, Anouk Aimée, Pierre Brasseur, Paul Meurisse, Charles Aznavour, Jean Galland

Γαλλία / France
1959
Ασπρόμαυρο / B&W
93'
Γαλλικά / French

* Screens on 25th September and 26th September