Great Movies About Inner Turmoil

[Bad Ambassador]

Teenage Mutant Inner Turmoils

[lipsink]

Both Bad Lieutenants.

[MortSahlFan]

Lots of great foreign movies mentioned above!

"Umberto D" (Vittorio De Sica - my favorite director)

[sponk]

Lots of great foreign movies mentioned above!

"Umberto D" (Vittorio De Sica - my favorite director)

Have you seen my suggestion, Gaslight?  It's about the inner turmoil suffered by a very devoted and loving husband whose wacky bitch of a wife goes mental and makes his life hell. It's difficult to watch her test his patience and play with his sanity with her female antics, but it's a very good film nonetheless. I think you'd like it.

[MortSahlFan]

Have you seen my suggestion, Gaslight?  It's about the inner turmoil suffered by a very devoted and loving husband whose wacky bitch of a wife goes mental and makes his life hell. It's difficult to watch her test his patience and play with his sanity with her female antics, but it's a very good film nonetheless. I think you'd like it.

Yes, loved it, loved Ingrid Bergman.. I think the only movie above mentioned I haven't seen is "Pierrot Le Fou"

[Sebastian Cobb]

Addiction, depression, alienation, etc.... The farther back, the more rare it is. The only one I can think of in the 1940s was "The Lost Weekend"

The two other Seitz/Wilder collabs of that era Sunset Boulevard and Double Indemnity definitely feature inner turmoil to varying extents. More so in Boulevard, but I'd say the whole set up of Indemnity deals with guilt.

The Ninth Configuration.

[MortSahlFan]

The two other Seitz/Wilder collabs of that era Sunset Boulevard and Double Indemnity definitely feature inner turmoil to varying extents. More so in Boulevard, but I'd say the whole set up of Indemnity deals with guilt.

The Ninth Configuration.

All great ones.. Speaking of Stacy Keach (underrated actor), check out John Huston's "Fat City" which is one of my favorites, but is the epitome of inner turmoil.. Young Jeff Bridges, too.

[Twed]

Quadraphenia

[Bazooka]

Ernest Goes to Jail

[Dr Syntax Head]

Both Bad Lieutenants.

They don't qualify both after the 1980

[Monsieur Verdoux]

Save the Tiger is a pretty good one that's kind of forgotten nowadays?

[DukeDeMondo]

Thought that new Paul Schrader, First Reformed, really fit the bill for this - certainly my favourite film he's been involved with since Taxi Driver.

This does indeed fit the bill, as does Bresson's Diary Of A Country Priest, of which First Reformed is almost a direct remake. I mean, they've virtually identical in many ways. Hardly surprising, given Shcrader's much-documented love of Bresson, but still. There's homage or what have you and then there's just doing exactly the same thing except with a slightly different quandary eating at the protagonist.

Also on Schrader, it doesn't get much more Great Movies About Inner Turmoil than Last Temptation Of Christ. Starts with him clawing about in the dirt besieged by torments beyond measure and he's not in much better shape by the end.

What about films that might not be "about" inner turmoil, so much, but that seem to result from a bad dose of it. A lot of Lars Von Trier's later films would fall under this umbrella, assuming you're the sort of person that can take LVT's films or anything he says about them or himself remotely seriously. Certainly the likes of Antichrist and The House That Jack Built would be pretty perfect examples of that sort of thing.*

*I'm not including Melancholia because on the surface that is actually about "inner turmoil," it's not just something that feels like a lot of inner turmoil is moiling away in its guts.

The Exorcist may already have been mentioned, sorry if it has and I missed it, but it's a good example, as is the third one, I suppose. This is probably where I should be saying "especially the director's cut of the third one." That's probably true, but to be honest I don't remember a great deal about the director's cut.

The absolutely brilliant Nobuo Nakagawa film Hell, or Jigoku, from 1960, gives its protagonist some seriously intense moral belly ache, and on some level isn't a million miles removed from the aforementioned House That Jack Built. Nothing like it formally or tonally or anything, nothing like it at all in many ways, certainly the protagonist has nothing in common with Jack whatsoever, but broadly the narrative trajectory is much the same. Starts with Bad Shit happening and ends with... well. It's not a fun watch, really, despite the wild goings on of the final act.

EDIT: Sorry, I missed the pre-1980s stipulation also. Still, Diary Of A Country Priest, The Exorcist and Jigoku remain in the running.