Marion Kellmann

“Ekstase” is a montage of scenes from various silent films. Based on similar settings and gestures it explores the stereotype of women on the verge of insanity. In a repetitive montage the same symptoms and actions recur repeatedly in different places, different sceneries and with different people. In the beginning there is a tranquil montage of women sleeping. Waking up they realize in despair that they are captives in their bedrooms. An outburst of rage results in sudden weakness, and men rush to help them. The women are then carried away and are treated through hypnosis and suggestion. This is followed by an attack of hysteria, similar to the ones that are captured in Charcot`s „Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière“. This collection of photographs had also been the starting point for Marion Kellmann’s research in various European film archives.
At the end of the 19th century neurological science looked to find a key to hysteria and ways for the classification of this phenomenon. Jean-Martin Charcot, chief of the Salpêtrière clinic in Paris, became an expert of high renown in this field. He claimed that the hysteric woman would be the man-machine, once described by the physician and philosopher La Mettrie. Charcot believed that every hysteric attack followed a structure of four different phases that could be provoked and repeated through suggestion and hypnosis. In order to prove this he decided to let his patients and their attacks be photographed which resulted in the „Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière“. Charcot presented himself as the director of this spectacle. The images of the women who
obeyed his rules like actresses became famous across the globe.
At the turn of the century hysteria had become a fashionable disease. Its symptoms could be in found in various art forms, but especially in silent films. „Ekstase“ mirrors the genesis of hysteria. Looked at it from today, the view of women’s mental state has its comical side as well. The film’s montage suggests that the spectacle of the emotionally unstable women seems to be automated and controllable. The manipulation becomes visible and the diagnosis turns against itself.