I have a friend who is an Ophthalmologist and he’s looking to do a presentation on Ophthalmology in film. He has several movies picked out - At First Sight, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Blink, and a few others. I told him I’d come here and ask our panel of experts for suggestions.
He’s not just looking for movies about eyes or blind people, he’s specifically looking for Ophthalmology - exams, procedures, consults, etc.
Can you help us out here?
The Inner Sanctum mystery Dead Man’s Eyes (1944).
Billy Pilgrim in “Slaughterhouse Five” is one. Don’t recall if there are any exams or such shown though. But a planeload of them crashes with only Billy surviving which is a key scene.
I haven’t seen it, but The Five Senses features an eye doctor who is going deaf.
Dancer in the Dark feature Bjork who’s going blind. I believe there’s a scene with an eye doctor in that one.
Space Cowboys features Donald Sutherland faking his way through an eye exam (more of a physical than an eye doctor’s office).
Minority Report features a rather unorthodox eye surgeon.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays an optometrist in Secrets & Lies, but I don’t recall any scenes taking place at her job (though there might be one).
Finally, the one citation for “opthamologist” in the IMDB features this charming sounding horror movie (read the plot synopsis): Angustia
Just bumping this to try to get a few more responses…
I haven’t seen it and probably shouldn’t be recommending it, but Woody Allen’s Hollywood Ending features Allen playing director with psychosomatic blindness; maybe there’s an opthamology scene in there.
MST3K’s Attack of the The Eye Creatures
How heavy-laden do the Opthamology scenes have to be? I liked the scene in The Color of Money when Paul Newman goes in for his long overdue eye test. “Better…better…better…” It was kind of a turning point for his character too, not just a cheap gag…
This is related in a sideways kind of way-
in Woody Allen’s Celebrity RobinWilliams plays an actor who suddenly finds himself out of focus. It’s a cool image trick.
A Beautiful Mind - when Russell Crowe as Nash is getting his physical for his Top Secret work with Parcher, they check his eyes.
Pearl Harbor and A Clockwork Orange. The last one isn’t so much an exam as a re-education session where they prop his eyelids open and apply eye drops.
That Bond film Never Say Never Again has a scene where the villain gets the retinas of the President.
In The Terminator, Ah-nold has to tend to his own optical, uh, crisis.
The Eyes of Laura Mars is an old thriller with Faye Dunaway playing a photographer who develops precognition. I dunno if there’s an optometric/opthamalogic scene in it, though. I barely remember seeing it at all.
Would your friend include relevant scenes from TV shows?
Never Say Never Again was loosely based, IIRC, on the earlier Connery Bond Thunderball. In that one, the SMERSH-based nuclear-missile hijacker has his retinas surgically modified so he can pass for the NATO pilot. Although there was something of an eye exam in the film, there may not have been an optometric professional in that scene, unless Luciana Paluzzi’s SMERSH assassin character qualifies.
Folks, it’s ophthalmology.
ph and th and l.
Anguish
Horror film where people get their eyes forceable removes by an opthamoligists assitant.
And the best one would be
Crimes and Misdemeanors A great movie where the main character is an eye doctor. (there is also a great sub-plot where a Rabbi who is he patient is going blind)
IIRC the doctor scene in Tommy includes an eye exam, although I don’t think Jack Nicholson is meant to be an ophthalmologist but rather some sort of specialist in psychosomatic disorders.
No Time for Sergeants has a brief and humorous eye exam scene with Andy Griffith as the examinee.
Someone who dosen’t like my spelling in this thread needs to come here.