The Mind Benders

After an opening that seems to set the stage for a typical Cold War paranoia film, veteran director Basil Dearden increasingly steers away from the spy thriller mold to instead take on broader ethical and philosophical questions. In fact, as the story unfolds, it sets up a dramatic clash between the desire for knowledge inherent in scientific research and the overwhelming passion of love itself, imagined as two competing forces locked in a constant “pleasure principle” battle.

At the center of this struggle we find the eminent Dr. Longman, his mind so numbed by his horrific isolation experience that his love for his wife is erased, causing him to treat her in a deplorable manner until his redemption arrives in a feel-good epilogue (albeit a bit too pat) in which an emotional outburst provoked by the birth of his son abruptly restores his psychic equilibrium.

The screenplay is rich in stimulating dialogue that calls into question psychoanalysis (the veiled insistence on the erotic dimension is interesting), physiology (the Pavlovian conditioning symbolized by the dog’s presence), and even politics (the exploitation of the research by the powers that be).

Dr. Longman – who seeks to lay claim to the institute’s importance and the logic behind the discovery – was a bit ahead of his time with his biting critique of the military’s characteristic rigidity (“Do this, you’re a patriot. Do that, you’re a traitor“).