Clean, Shaven (The Criterion Collection) [DVD]

Peter Winter (Peter Greene) is a tormented schizophrenic man who is let out of a hospital despite suffering from extreme symptoms of nearly continuous auditory hallucinations, paranoia, and a highly fragmented, discontinuous sense of reality. His one steady goal is to find his young daughter, Nicole (Jennifer MacDonald), who has begun a new life as an adoptee, following the murder of her mother. Peter first visits his own mother, a taciturn, emotionally withholding woman who is not at all pleased to see him. Later he discovers his daughter's whereabouts, when her adoptive mother brings Nicole to visit her grandmother (who is as chilly toward Nicole as she is toward Peter). Meanwhile, a police detective (Robert Albert), searching for a serial child killer, has concluded that Peter is his man. A fateful ending is set up when the detective encounters Peter with Nicole at an isolated beach.There are serious flaws in this film: the screenplay is not well wrought and is too full of ambiguities, especially the entire serial child killing subplot. This is highly distracting. The acting is second rate, except for Greene's and MacDonald's performances. The film's strength lies in Kerrigan's insightful deployment of sound, setting and other effects to create the clinical realism of Peter's schizophrenic experience. Peter's intense, perpetual fear is palpable. Much of the film is shot in his car, where he has placed masking tape over the mirror, and newspaper over several windows, to fortify his privacy. The effect is an impacted atmosphere of paranoid insulation. Peter's hallucinated auditory experience - garbled voices, static and other noise, unaccompanied by any visual representations - is clinically valid. The voices and noise haunt him steadily. He tells Nicole he has had a radio device implanted in his head, with a transmitter in a fingernail. Earlier we had been exposed to his violent efforts to rid himself of these devices using scissors or a knife to gouge them out - forms of delusion-driven self-mutilation that are uncommon but not rare in persons suffering the throes of severe acute psychotic episodes. The use of tight close up camera angles - viewing Peter from just behind his back or in profile in his car - heighten the sense of claustrophobia, the extreme narrowing of Peter's psychotic world. The setting - Miscou Island, in New Brunswick - adds further accents of wildness and isolation to the overall tone of the film.It can be argued that the detective's pursuit of Peter adds yet another source of paranoid fever to the film, though for me this conceit does not ring true. The fact that someone really is after Peter detracts from the power of his delusions. Other than this, Kerrigan can be congratulated for steering clear of the false visuals (realistically visualized imaginary friends and enemies) and other clinically implausible effects that Ron Howard used more recently in A Beautiful Mind. Anyone - professional or lay viewer - might rightly wonder how Peter could be discharged from the hospital in such poor psychiatric condition. Of course that happens every day in most contemporary short stay hospital settings, because involuntary treatment laws in most states prohibit keeping patients against their will except in the most extreme circumstances of immediate potential for violence. But we are given the impression at the start of this film that Peter had been incarcerated in a more traditional mental hospital, the sort in which people stay for long periods before discharge, until they appear relatively free of symptoms, sometimes longer. Of course these large old facilities are typically short staffed, keen clinical observation of patients may be scarce, and patients not uncommonly can muster a façade of normality to win their freedom.The depiction of Peter's mother is also troublesome. Her grim withholding of affection for Peter and Nicole resurrects the spectra of the 'schizophrenogenic mother' - a psycho dynamic fiction popular the 1950s and 60s that accused parents, especially mothers, of causing schizophrenia through self serving, unaffectionate regard for their children. This myth was laid to rest long ago, and it is a black mark against this film to see such a notion resurrected. It does not dispel the power of this negative maternal portrayal when, from a distance, we see the mother crying as she hangs one of her son's shirts on a clothesline near the end.

Really well acted film that takes you into the mind of a man suffering from schizophrenia, capturing the sounds and visions. Released from institutionalization, schizophrenic Peter Winter (Peter Greene) returns to his small Canadian island hometown in search of his daughter.

I I like that the movie shows him with a chip in his head. They put one in my brain too, now it is giving me dizziness..They are giving me an eeg. I hope they will remove it. The goverment put it in my head when I was in the ICU after a suicide attempt. The voices told me to do it. I do not know why I am writting this review, since you all can read my mind.However, the movie does not show the cameras that they put on people with schizophrenia. They even put one in my bathroom!!! We are no treat to anyone, but the goverment thinks otherwise. They also put in the movies that somehow we are bad people, this is not the case. I would never harm anyone, the voices only tell us to hurt ourselves, not any one else.Overall it is a good movie. However, a beautiful mind and shutter Island is better of a movie, but the both of them are Hollywod films. Then comes Canvas is also a good movie and is not a Hollywood film.

I greatly appreciated this film. It gives the viewer a slight taste of the experience of psychosis; enough of a taste that some viewers may be advised to avoid. For reasonably mentally stable and open-minded viewers, it offers an opportunity to better understand mental illness. I appreciated Peter’s strength in discernment of and non reaction to hallucinations. It includes social misunderstanding, struggles to grasp, distain, and fear that so easily responds with deadly force to those with Peter’s affliction.

This film is very intense and 79 minutes is about what I could take of it! We follow Peter (played by Peter Greene), a man with some kind of schizophrenia and parts of the film is how he sees the world. We are given very few explanations and the plot contains some interesting ambiguities. Clean, shaven is more about the audiovisual than about narrative and/or social criticism. Through the film we hear voices like an untuned radio, sometimes in the scene and sometimes it is inside Peter's head. Clean, shaven also contains a few quite nasty strong scenes (a corpse in close up, Peter trying to cut of his nail etc) that sensitive viewers should be prepared for. Even though the film is set in strange and ugly milieus like desolate industrial areas and shabby mansions it also contains a kind of beauty or at least it's own special aesthetics. Also, the actors are excellent, especially Peter Greene who manages to look really tormented throughout the movie.The Criterion edition also contains some extras like commentary and a video essay. I'm really glad I have seen this special movie. Recommended to everyone interested in cinema, especially american independent!

This mind trip advances in an edgy, contorted manner. You'll feel trapped inside the head of a schizophrenic named Peter. There is plenty of extreme closeups, attention to simple details, little sounds amplified. He has a constant nervousness and some peculiar mannerisms. As you are plunged into his brittle macrocosm, you'll get a strong sense of all these instabilities.After Peter is released from a mental institute, he tries to absorb his surroundings while searching for his daughter. There are some moments of self-mutilation that will make you cringe.There are other parts of Clean, Shaven that can be hard to sit through. The director really does well creating an uncomfortable setting. My only problem with this movie is the opening scene. It tries to set up the story and mislead you, but I found the truth too easily identifiable. This cost it a star in my opinion, but it's still a hard-hitting psychodelic trip worth taking.

Love it but it is a bit disturbing

The ending was good, if somewhat shocking

Ping Pong Effekte zwischen der reellen Wahrnehmung und Wahnvorstellungen eines schizophrenen Psychopathen absolut fesselnd dargestellt.Trotz der anhaltenden Sprödigkeit zieht einen der Film von der ersten Minute in seinen Bann und so auch in den Kopf von Peter Winter. Man merkt Peter Greene als Schauspieler die Darstellung in keiner Sekunde an. Method Acting@ its best. Alles in dem Film wirkt, als wäre man mitten drin.Zum Glück wurde keine deutsche Audio Spur integriert, was die Atmosphäre wahrscheinlich komplett fälschen wurde. Es gibt hier nur deutsche Untertitel.Ein Muss für den wahren Film Fan. Das hier ist Kunst.

ist dieses ungewöhnliche Filmerlebnis, das versucht die Gefühlswelt eines psychotisch Erkrankten hör- und sichtbar zu machen. Wie meine drei Vorrezensenten betonen, ist die akustische und optische Umsetzung wohl gelungen, denn sowohl Peter Greene, als auch die komplexe Bild- und Geräuschkulisse vermitteln einen anschaulichen Eindruck, wie sich das krankhafte Erleben des Peter Winter möglicherweise anfühlt.Das war's dann aber auch. Und so begannen für mich nach etwa 30 Minuten sich diese Effekte abzunutzen. Die schrägen Geräusch- und optischen Eindrücke wiederholen sich immer wieder auf's neue, und die wenige Handlung, wie auch die überzeichnet monotone Darstellung der Mutter und ihrer Umgebung lassen eine anhaltend graue Atmosphäre aufkommen, die das anfängliche Interesse nicht aufrecht zu halten vermag. Leider.

Lange habe ich nach diesen Film gesucht. Mit einiger Verspätung (Jahrzehnte!!!)konnte ich den Film jetzt begutachten. Tja, das Budget war wohl nicht sehr hoch. Allerdings erzielt der Film auf jeden Fall seine Wirkung,