The Artistic Crime of the Century

Fifty years ago this morning, a 24-year-old French high-wire artist named Philippe Petit walked three-quarters of a mile across a tight rope, 1350 feet over the sidewalks of NYC.

No net.

He spent 45 minutes walking and playing across the sky, waving to the weather and birds. He lay down and breathed it all in.

Never say the dentist’s office doesn’t inspire feats of imagination, because it was there, in the waiting room, he saw the 1968 drawing of the proposed twin towers, and an idea took shape.

There is an event tonight and tomorrow called TOWERING at Saint John the Divine. If you want to get tickets, you can do so here.

The 1950s were awash in educational films. From the terrifying Duck and Cover films (what to do during a nuclear explosion)…

…to the mundane, Let’s Make a Sandwich.

There were films made for general audiences, and there were films made for educational and training purposes, for mental health professionals only.

For example, The Steps of Age (1950) deals with some people's stresses upon retirement.

On the other end of the spectrum, and intended for a general audience, is Fears of Children.

This 1951 short film was intended to help people understand those struggling with mental illness.

It was sponsored by the Oklahoma State Department of Public Health, the National Association for Mental Health, and the Mental Health Film Board.

(A companion pamphlet was issued under the same title, which you can order if you want! )

From the official summary: This film was probably made in the late 1920s, either in Semmering, Austria, where the Freuds summered in 1924-1928 or Schneewinkel in the Bavarian Alps, where they stayed in 1929.

Schneewinkel seems more likely given the ages of the children.

The group includes Anna Freud. The others are most likely Martin Freud and Dorothy T. Burlingham, with two of her children.

The next one is a compilation of various films.

The official summary reads: The montage begins with Sigmund and Martha Freud's fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration in Grinzing, Vienna, Austria, in September 1936.

Family members, guests, and residents from the surrounding countryside are shown arriving and greeting the Freuds.

The camera then follows the Brunswicks' daughter Matilda at play with another child, possibly a Freud granddaughter.

Attached to these segments are earlier films showing Freud on the balcony at Lake Grundlsee in 1930 and later in Pötzleinsdorf, Vienna, Austria.

At Pötzleinsdorf, Freud is shown reading a book while Martha Freud and Minna Bernays sit nearby at a table where Princess Marie Bonaparte joins them.

A brief street scene follows, showing Freud taking a walk. A copy of the film of Emanuel Löwy's visit with Freud in July 1932 is reintroduced here.

The film ends with Sigmund Freud, Martha Freud, Minna Bernays, Princess Marie Bonaparte, and others admiring a child held by Ruth Mack Brunswick, possibly her daughter Matilda.

Born in the United States in March 1929, she returned to Europe in the fall of that year.

From the official summary: This film is of the Eleventh Congress of the International Psycho-Analytical Association, Oxford, England, July 1929. Narrated by Freud disciple, Sándor Lorand.

In it, you can see Karen Horney, Anna Freud, A.A. Brill, Max Eitingon and others.

Appended to Lorand's film is an earlier film of Freud and members of his family made at Ernst Simmel's Sanatorium Schloss Tegel and Psychoanalytische Klinik in Berlin in 1928.

Lorand received the Freud film from his analyst and mentor, Sándor Ferenzi, before he left Oxford.

Ferenzi made the gift knowing that Lorand was disappointed over not being able to include Freud in his film of the Congress, which Freud had been too ill to attend.

I hope you enjoyed these dispatches!

Until next week, I will remain…