Review of The Duchess of Langeais

So I went back into a book I was reading a few weeks ago, The Dreams of Interpretation: A Century Down the Royal Road, finding this perfect quote from the editors describing the illumination of the space between Pascal (19th Century) and Freud (20th) which the movie by Jacques Rivette that I saw tonight so monumentally demonstrated (and which is so fundamental to what I am experiencing myslef): "If, in the century in which Freud's own life began, it was still necessary to secure a stronghold as Pascal's Wager thus had to be transformed, honed into the sharpest superegoic injunction imaginable - "believe" - as the only apparent means to this end; if thus it was still apparently necessary to submit to the Father at every instant, to remain standing awake all night to assure one's salvation - if this is the way the post-Copernican theologians would have it, Freud, nonetheless, and lucky for us, offers a new turn, something quite different, in the necessity of thought and practice." Yup. As powerful a film as I've seen in ages. Those who hate it loathe the cinema. Luckily for them it is dying.