The President's Analyst

kestrell and I watched this last weekend. It's a paranoid thriller/satire from 1967, written and directed by Theodore J. Flicker, and starring James Coburn and his excellent psychotic grin. Coburn plays a psychiatrist who gets hired to work for the President of the United States, to help relieve some of the man's psychic pressures. Coburn quickly finds that he no longer has any outlet for his *own* increasing pressures. He flees his job, pursued by agents of multiple countries who want the secrets inside his head. Wackiness ensues, including a delightful sequence where he takes refuge with some traveling hippie musicians. In the end, order is restored and goodness prevails... or does it?

This was of my favorite movies as a young man, but I hadn't seen it fifteen or twenty years. It has dated in rather a surprising manner. I mean, I was expecting to see fashion, music, culture, and politics which reflected the period, all of which are definitely there. What I was *not* expecting was the way in which the satire has been rendered... pathetic. Various ideas which are presented in the story as insane exaggerations, beyond the realm of the possible, have passed into actual history years ago, or are poised to happen at any time now. Some kinds of humor are funny because they're true, but satire gets less funny the more literally true it becomes. A lot of the humor still works, thankfully, and I do still recommend the film. But it's definitely not the same film I saw back in the 80s...