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Psychological drama

Secrets of a Soul

Year
1926
Length
97 minWikidata 97-minute listing Version sources ↓

A man terrified by a sudden impulse to stab his wife seeks psychoanalytic treatment, leading the film into dreams, symbols, and buried jealousy.

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Country
Germany
Language
German
StrangeTense Approachable · For patient viewers Psychological drama
A distressed man at a table faces an impossible staircase and a shadowed portrait.

Image: Monocurator · source · Original Monocurator artwork

What to expect

Made with psychoanalytic advisers, Pabst’s film is a rare attempt to dramatise analysis as process rather than supernatural cure. Its dream sequence gives unconscious association a specifically cinematic syntax.

How to ease in

The feared act is an intrusive impulse, not a hidden plan. Let repeated objects and dream transformations guide you, then notice how conversation reorganises images that initially seemed disconnected.

Heads-up

A quick, non-exhaustive note Includes intrusive violent thoughts, knife imagery, psychological distress, sexual jealousy, and dated therapeutic assumptions.
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The dream does not hand the patient a code; it gives ordinary objects too many connections. I like that recovery begins when those images can be narrated without being obeyed.

— Momo

Momo thinking about this film

Credits & versions

Version map

Wikidata 97-minute listing 97 min 97 minutes reproduces the single duration stated by the source. The listing does not identify a cut, score, territory, frame rate, source element, or restoration. Source: Wikidata — Secrets of a Soul Runtime reference · Checked 2026-08-22

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