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In Flowers for Algernon (by D. Keyes) (1966) there is a passage describing a movie that main protagonist was watching:

A psychological film about a man and woman apparently in love but actually destroying each other. Everything suggests that the man is going to kill his wife but at the last moment, something she screams out in a nightmare makes him recall something that happened to him during his childhood. The sudden memory shows him that his hatred is really directed at a depraved governess who had terrified him with frightening stories and left a flaw in his personality. Excited at discovering this, he cries out with joy so that his wife awakens. He takes her in his arms and the implication is that all his problems have been solved.

The movie's title was not given. Does the described movie actually exist (if so - what's the title?) or was it invented by the novel's author for narrative purposes?

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    lol this is a very meta story-id question. The story we are actually being asked to identify wouldn't be on-topic on the site, yet it comes from an on-topic film. Neat! Off-topic story id questions have a loophole now! Write a quick Harry Potter fan-fic about him dreaming of some random story / movie and ask what was he dreaming about ;D
    – NKCampbell
    Commented Jan 11, 2020 at 2:43
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    Neither the wikipedia page nor the TV tropes page identifies the film which leads me to suspect Keyes invented it for narrative purposes. Plato's allegory of the cave and Don Quixote are referenced and identifiable in the book but it seems not this film. Keyes drew on many real life experiences from teaching students with special needs and even came up with the basic idea of intelligence improvement when he argued with his parents who were pushing him to study medicine, so narrative purposes seems very likely, but unless someone can find a quote from him we dont know for certain
    – skyjack
    Commented Jun 19, 2020 at 2:49
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    @skyjack: The described film is Plato's allegory of the cave and Don Quixote, just mixed up and jumbled around a bit.
    – Kevin
    Commented Sep 15, 2020 at 23:56
  • If only you'd asked this question back in 2010 while Keyes was still alive...
    – Ross Presser
    Commented Apr 21, 2022 at 21:14
  • I scrubbed through two adaptations of this story just to see if the directors happened to put the scene in, but it was for naught. I did, however, get to see Cliff Robertson do a really weird 60's dance montage. So there's that...
    – Digital Jedi
    Commented Aug 26, 2022 at 3:12

1 Answer 1

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Comments and votes and time seem to indicate this isn't an actual story:

Neither the wikipedia page nor the TV tropes page identifies the film which leads me to suspect Keyes invented it for narrative purposes. Plato's allegory of the cave and Don Quixote are referenced and identifiable in the book but it seems not this film. Keyes drew on many real life experiences from teaching students with special needs and even came up with the basic idea of intelligence improvement when he argued with his parents who were pushing him to study medicine, so narrative purposes seems very likely, but unless someone can find a quote from him we dont know for certain – skyjack Jun 19, 2020 at 2:49

@skyjack - The described film is Plato's allegory of the cave and Don Quixote, just mixed up and jumbled around a bit. – Kevin Sep 15, 2020 at 23:56

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  • These aren't comments made at the time
    – Valorum
    Commented Aug 7, 2022 at 6:38
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    @Valorum actually this answer is ONLY interesting because demonstrates how much the human brain speeds perception by filling in the blanks with what should be there. I likewise read "at the time" despite it saying "Comments and votes and time". The answer being merely a paste of the question comments and a belief that IF there was an answer it would have been discovered by now.
    – lucasbachmann
    Commented Aug 7, 2022 at 7:29
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    The lack of an answer doesn't prove that there's no answer, it just demonstrates our collective ignorance
    – Valorum
    Commented Aug 7, 2022 at 7:33
  • @Valorum - Yeah, but if there's no comments or anything like, "I know I've read it before!" or something, and this description comes from a fictional work instead of someone's real memories, so the possibility of it being a fictional piece of fiction is way higher? ... Or it might get more traction in Literature.SE instead of here?
    – Malady
    Commented Aug 7, 2022 at 17:20
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    @Malady - There are umpteen student films, foreign films, short films and lost films that this could be.
    – Valorum
    Commented Aug 7, 2022 at 18:05

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