English title: Asylum
Based on the short stories The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether (1845), by Edgar Allan Poe, La mona de imitación (1923), by Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Putanitsa (tr. 'Confusion') (1897), or its variation Oshibka (tr. 'Mistake') (1900), by Aleksandr Kuprin, and Mysl (tr. 'Thought') (1902), by Leonid Andreyev.
A man goes to visit his fiancée at the madhouse where she works as a psychiatrist. He encounters several persons there who tell curious stories about mental patients. Each story is developed in flashback: a man whose wife one day starts repeating everything he says; a woman who feigns madness on a train in order to better enjoy her honeymoon; a man who feigns madness so as not to be punished for a crime he is planning to commit.
Collection of stories about mad people framed by Poe's story. The joining of stories with different styles and moods into one coherent whole has been passably achieved; the film doesn't aim for subtlety or depth, but the mise-en-scène is serviceable, and the result is curious and entertaining.
Rating: 51
Links to all but one of the short stories (one may use the machine translation button to convert the ones in Russian to one's preferred language):
Александр Куприн: Путаница (kuprin-lit.ru)
Александр Куприн: Ошибка (Вариант рассказа "Путаница") (kuprin-lit.ru)
A Dilemma - Wikisource, the free online library
The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether - Wikisource, the free online library
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