| Garbo ponders her identity. |
A plot device staple, despite its
unlikely real-life occurrence, amnesia has shown no favoritism toward any
particular genre nor sex. Screen legend
Greta Garbo made it fashionable for women to forget their identities in 1932's As You Desire Me, thus inspiring other
actresses to ponder “Who am I?” A sample
roster spans five decades and includes Jennifer Jones (Love Letters), Ava Gardner (Singapore),
Karen Valentine (Jane Doe), and
Lindsay Wagner (Stranger in My Bed).
| Peck and Ingrid Bergman in Spellbound. |
| A confused Garner in Mister Buddwing. |
It's hard to remember many amnesiac comedies,
although Desperately Seeking Susan
and The Road to Hong Kong spring to
mind with little difficulty. The most
interesting amnesiac plots have appeared in mysteries and espionage
thrillers. Gregory Peck played the new
head of an asylum who turns out to be an impostor with amnesia in Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945). Warner Baxter's The Crime Doctor was a sleuthing psychologist, who had been
a master criminal before being reformed by amnesia. Unethical psychiatrist Tony Perkins tried to
manipulate amnesiac killer Charles Bronson into murdering his wife's lover in
the 1971 thriller Someone Behind the Door. James Garner, unable to remember his name,
saw a Budweiser truck and an airplane and decided to call himself Mister Buddwing (1966). It was certainly one of the more commercial
films of its time.
The article was reprinted with the authors' permission from the Encyclopedia of Films Themes, Settings and Series.