Strange Illusions

 A short analysis of the 1945 film Strange Illusions

A teenager named Paul has a dream while out with a doctor, that his widowed mother has begun seeing a man with a murderous secret. Sinister in nature his dream was incredibly precognitive and he quickly makes his way home and upon arrival it appears the help of the house is in agreement regarding the man being ultimately a suspicious character. 

For a few initial instances, it seems Paul’s fretting is overblown concert as Brett, the man to soon be engaged to his mother gives off no innately unnerving vibe. However behind closed doors with the aid of what was supposed to be his doctor, expresses his own sense of unease at Paul’s prying about business he seemingly shouldn’t know. Proving Paul’s hypothesis correct, the man is in fact out for revenge against the family of Detective Cartwright, or the late father of the protagonist, for legal trouble. 

Paul’s sister comes to attention on the issue, divulging to her brother that while swimming Brett had forced himself on her. Explaining, though he stopped as quickly as he attempted, “I felt sort of queer about him ever since.”

All the while, in spite of Paul’s clear unease and Brett’s progressively more insistent attempts for a swift marriage, the widowed Ms. Cartwright remains incredibly oblivious to the situation. A fool in love, so to say. 

Overall the subtext of the movie seems to lend itself to the idea that the gut instinct of a child’s intuition is usually more accurate than mirror neurons being manipulated in a fully developed frontal lobe.