Colin Firth in

Drama. Produced by The British Film Institute* & British TV Chanel 4

DIRECTOR: Hugh Brody

WRITER: Hugh Brody and Michael Ignatieff

PRINCIPAL CAST: Paul Scofield [Alexander Scherbatov], Maria Schell [Sophie Rubin], Colin Firth [young Alexander], Clare Higgins [young Sophie], Diana Quick [Anna], Frank Finlay [Sigmund Freud] et al

ABOUT THE FILM: Dealing with psychoanalysis and passion, 1919 most certainly isn't what you may call "light entertainment". Two childhood friends meet some 50 years later in an apartment in Vienna, they visit Freud's consulting rooms [now museum] and talk about their lives. Both Alexander Scherbatov and Sophie Rubin are [fictive] patients to Sigmund Freud and we see flashbacks from their therapy sessions, interlaced with authentic film clips. Alexander is a Russian aristocrat, haunted by his incestuous longing for his sister Nina. Sophie, whos parents sent her to Freud, rejects his efforts to "cure" her from her passion for a woman.

The three pictures [right] show Colin as young Alexander mock fencing with his sister Nina, his anguished face as he rests his sword on her heart. The loversis a detail from a painting by the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. Snappies of Colin courtesy of Dolores