Dark Visions how the movie camera’s evil eye transformed hypnotism into a sinister art... Words by Deirdre Barrett hen a hypnotist appears on screen, expect evil. For more than a century, celluloid mesmerists have swung watches, twirled spiral disks and transfixed the unsuspecting with their piercing gaze. Maidens surrendered their virtue and good men staggered away, glassy-eyed, to steal and kill, while those familiar with real hypnosis convulsed with laughter or indignation. But why exactly is hypnosis at the movies so maligned?
Ethologists have observed that when any two animals, including humans, stare at each other unblinkingly for more than three seconds, they are invariably – to quote one behavioural coding system – about to either “fight or fuck.” On the silver screen, there’s a third alternative: you’re about to fall into a deep hypnotic trance where you can be controlled. Films occasionally employ the primal applications of the stare: in ’40s Westerns, cowboys froze and locked eyes just before the shootout and Rudolph Valentino’s reputation as the ‘Great Lover’ was built partly on his trademark smouldering gaze. More often, though, film reserves unbridled murderous or sexual eye contact – or an ambiguous combination of the two – for the mesmerist.
Topping British and American bestseller lists at the advent of cinema, George du Maurier’s 1894 novel Trilby became the most influential prototype for film hypnosis. It describes mesmerist Svengali seducing naive young Trilby while endowing her with an unearthly singing voice. At least eight versions have been filmed – including 1911 silent melodrama Svengali, the most successful 1931 version starring John Barrymore and 1983 made-for-TV movie with Jodie Foster as Trilby – signifying how powerfully the hypnotist captured the popular imagination. Countless films featured similar plots of malevolent males using hypnosis to seduce and control hapless heroines. Ethnologist Irenäus EiblEibesfeldt noted that during the “copulatory gaze”, the pupils dilate. To mimic this for the mesmerist, filmmakers lined the actors’ eyes with black pencil. The metaphoric sense of energy radiating from the eyes was concreted with lighting effects. In Svengali, there is a glow around the eyes of the mesmerist. In animated films, rays emanate from the eyes of the hypnotist while those of the subject spiral or go white. The hypnotic stare has become so much of a cliché that the 1979 vampire spoof Love At First Bite featured duelling hypnotists commanding, “Look into my eyes.” “No, you look into my eyes.” “No...”
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