By Paul Meehan
Cinema is ultimate to the area of psychic phenomena. a method so simple as a voice-over can simulate psychological telepathy, whereas strange lighting fixtures, set layout, or inventive electronic manipulation can conjure clairvoyant visions, precognition, or perhaps psychokinesis. This ebook analyzes the depiction of paranormal powers in movie, reading how videos like Star Wars, Independence Day, the golf green Mile, and dozens of others either replicate and impression the best way smooth society thinks approximately psychic skills. The subject matter is explored in approximately a hundred movies from quite a few genres together with drama, comedy, horror, technology fiction, crime melodrama, and kid's motion pictures, delivering a concise evaluate of the heritage and ideas of mainstream cinematic parapsychology.
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Additional info for Cinema of the Psychic Realm: A Critical Survey
Sample text
Director Archie Mayo deserves kudos for working with the notoriously difficult Barrymore while serving up gobs of mysterioso visual atmosphere and deftly mixing comedy, horror and romance into a highly diverting whole. Svengali was the first film of the sound era to portray an individual with psychic powers. Although Barrymore’s histrionic portrayal paints psi in an occult light, there is no clearly supernatural element to the plot. The transformative potential of psi is suggested in Trilby’s psychically-induced metamorphosis from shallow model to musical genius under her master’s paranormal tutelage.
Lilith Ritter (Helen Walker), with whom he hatches a scheme to defraud wealthy Chicagoans. Using information taken from the confidential files of Dr. Ritter’s patients, he makes it appear that he has obtained intimate knowledge of their personal lives via clairvoyance or telepathy. With his victims in awe of his apparently paranormal powers, Stanton bilks them out of a fortune while assuming a false piety that makes them believe he is a godly man. When he enlists Molly to impersonate the ghost of an industrialist’s dead sweetheart, she rebels and deliberately spoils the illusion.
As Svengali’s mental control of the diva begins to wane, Trilby starts to lose her singing talent and must ultimately choose between her love and her art. The Great Profile plays the role of the malevolent maestro with considerable verve, sporting a Rasputin-like appearance complete with a baroque beard, long hair and flowing operatic robes. ” Another sequence conveys Svengali’s hypno-telepathic powers in a distinctly cinematic fashion. It begins with a closeup of Barrymore’s magnetic eyes as the camera slowly pulls backward, through a window and out into the street, then travels over the rooftops of Paris, finally penetrating Trilby’s bedroom.