Maniac Chase (Edwin S. Porter, 1904, 10 mins, Silent, B&W): A "maniac" escapes from a mental institution and leads his guards on a circular chase; features unusual camera effects...for its time. (16mm, Print from Museum of Modern Art) The Folly of Dr. Tube (Abel Gance, 1914, 13 mins, Silent with music track, B&W): Subjective "funhouse" distortions are employed to show the effects of a mad scientist's magic powder. (16mm, Print from Canyon Cinema) Teinosuke Kinugasa's A Page of Madness is a beautiful, haunting tale of a man who takes a job as a janitor in a mental institution in order to be near his insane wife. Superimpositions, tilted angles, swish pans and rapid editing cinematically convey hallucinations, fantasies and memories from the anguished world of both the sane and insane. We are presented with a perceptual rather than physical reality, where appearances are subjective, emotions primary. The use of an asylum does not suggest a "cure" for insanity, a means to rationality, but perhaps instead a metaphor for personal psyche, indicating the extent to which we are all "confined" by our illusions. K.G.