Screening silent resistance: Male hysteria in first world war medical cinematography

Abstract

Medicalcinematography used in neuropsychiatry during the First World War created a particular iconography of so-called ‘war hysterics.’ Between 1916 and 1918, medical films by British, French, German, and Italian neuropsychiatrists pictured the gaits, gestures, and gazes of soldiers and officers suffering from this dysfunction generating a carefully choreographed and theatrical hysteria aesthetic that pathologized, stigmatized, and disempowered the filmed patients. The filmimages of the ‘hysterical men’ seemed to ‘catch’ the external appearance of what was considered to be a sign of male weakness and vulnerability as well as a threat for military fitness. On the one hand, they were made in order to convince colleagues, patients, and in a few cases also the public that ‘war hysteria’ was curable as they introduced a specific healing dramaturgy that expressed the wish for medical control over the diagnosis and treatment process. On the other hand, the historical film documents contain subtexts that refer to a subtle form of resistance or disobedience of the patients. These subtexts comment indirectly on the sensitive hierarchic relationship between military psychiatry’s representatives and the visually objectified individual, as well ason the relation between powers of the visualization technique film and (political) visibility of the subject.