Head Against the Wall

François cannot get on with his father. He burns the man's papers, takes his car and drives off, tears his own life up. The father has him committed to a psychiatric hospital, not for treatment but for correction. Inside there are two doctors: one who talks to the patients and works at it, one content to keep the place running. François is held there without being ill, and every day inside makes him a little more like the people around him. He escapes, is brought back, escapes again. The outside does not want him either. Georges Franju directs the French film; ninety-five minutes, with Jean-Pierre Mocky as François and Pierre Brasseur, Anouk Aimée and Charles Aznavour in the cast. It was Franju's first feature; before this he made documentaries. The film presents the asylum not as a place of treatment but as a place of confinement nobody can see into.