MAN WITHOUT MEMORY (MANN OHNE GEDACHTNIS)

Switzerland, 1984, 90 minutes, Colour.
Rudolf Bissegger, Hannelore Elsner, Rudger Vogler.
Directed by Kurt Gloor.

Man Without a Memory is an arresting Swiss drama. It opens with an atmosphere of mystery as an unidentified stranger is found by the police who spend much of the film trying to understand who he is, find his identity and reconstruct his memories. The impact of the film comes with the discovery chat he was a scientist involved in biological experimentation and that it had broken him and that his discovery of his memory was the final breaking point. The film is effective in terms of science fiction and science-reality. The film shows strongly the horrors of medical experimentation and its dangers. The film is a critique of modern medicine and technology gone berserk.
(Winner of OCIC and Interfilm awards at Berlin.)

1. Interesting and effective drama? Human study? Study of psychology? its strengths and its dangers?

2. Swiss production values: locations, authentic atmosphere? Contemporary interest?

3. Audiences identifying with the plot? With the central character? Sharing his experience? His plight, his sense of being alone, the mystery of his past? Seeing hie cope, cure, resisting the memory?

4. The truth for the man without a memory: his withdrawing from reality in order to cope? His abilities, cats, the wife, the drugs? the suggestion why he withdrew? Bringing back his memory and the risk for deep psychosis? Singing? the words? the mirror? the open door? his wife? his final scream? The effective point of the film?

5. The opening situation: the police, the discovery of the hero, the treatment of him, his hostility, suspicion, their roughness with him?

5. Aggression because of his not talking, suspicion and consequences?

7. The comparisons between police treatment and hospital treatment? The atmosphere, the patients, the scenes of hospital life?

8. Medical attitudes, the psychologists? Tests? Lisa and the repetitions? A growing confidence? Chess? Aggression? The truth drugs and the experiments? The staff eager for solutions, for their reputations?

9. The dramatic interchanges at the meetings? Discussion, differences, risks? The element of time? The return of the head of the department and the decisions?

10. The experiments, the new-born, hurt, scrubbed? Name? Mimicking? Music? Reflex reactions, chess, eating, washing up? Driving? Yet no excitement e.g. in shopping? Pain, suffering? The trips? The dead girl? Stirring of memories?

l1. Lisa and her approach? The various other members of the team?

12. The appearance of the man without a memory's wife, the possibility of a solution? Audience hopes for coping and a happy solution? Their hopes dashed?

13. Themes of the mind, emotions, coping? The severity of the experiments and their effect on the hero? His coping by withdrawing? Any possible treatment for an ultimate cure?