1948: The Mad, Mad, Mad World

The Snake Pit (1948)
Directed by Anatole Litvak
108 min.;U.S.A.; Black and White; Mono

It feels good to be back in the film blogsphere.  After the two-plus-week break I feel anxious to see what's been happening on the blogs in my blogroll.  I feel just as skin-crawlingly anxious to restart the Film of the Year project, looking at film history and/or history through one film per year.  Let's see...we left off at 1948.  Hmm...where to (re)start?  Well, where did we leave off?   In the post for 1947 we looked at Carol Reed's manhunt picture Odd Man Out (1947).  I wrote about how that film opened a door for me to a cinema tradition I hadn't been aware of previously, the cinema of Northern Ireland.  I pointed to a number of Reed's recognizable filmmaking techniques and other elements at play in the movie.  A host of film bloggers joined in the discussion in the comments section and fleshed out the examination of the film with insights on the film's charm, structure, audience appeal, characterizations and more. We also talked about the film's theme of alienation.  That theme, about the lone individual lost among enemies in a hostile or alien environment, seems to turn up often in post-war cinema.

When I sit down to write about a motion picture from a given year I like to find an element in the previous year's movie that serves as link between the two.  The link could be an actor, director, studio, topic, technique, or theme.  In Odd Man Out, the anti-hero Johnny McQueen suffers from a number of psychic breakdowns.  Reed dramatizes these breakdowns through impressionistic imagery that evokes McQueen's trouble state of mind.  Watching that reminded me of the great expressionist phantasmagoria of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), half of which is seen through the nightmare interior reality of an inmate of an insane asylum.  I wondered what other representations of mental illness, its twist on reality, and the methods of its treatment exist on film?  As luck would have it, Twentieth Century-Fox released one the finest attempts in motion pictures to explore questions about mental illness and its treatment in 1948...

The Snake Pit (1948), based on Mary Jane Ward's real life experiences recorded in her book of the same name, stars Olivia de Havilland as Virginia Cunningham, a struggling novelist who suffers from a form of paranoid schizophrenia.  Shortly after marrying, Virigina suffers a major breakdown and is sent to a state mental hospital.  Under the care of the calm, kindly and oh, so rational Dr. Kik (Green for Danger's (1945) Leo Genn), an adherent of Freudian psychotherapy, she undergoes a series of treatments including electroshock therapy, hydrotherapy, narcosynthesis, and psychoanalysis.  These treatments, combined with the overcrowded, understaffed hospital and the strict regimentation she's forced to endure, only serve to exacerbate Virginia's doubts and fears.  She feels ever more alienated from the staff, the other patients, and even herself.  Late in the picture, she's punished for not complying with hospital rules and sent to the terrifying dungeon-like ward 33, the ward reserved for the most severe cases.  Here she makes a breakthrough by convincing herself that she's not as sick as the others in the ward and therefore can get well after all.  She and Dr. Kik proceed with the slow process of psychoanalysis and uncover the origins of her illness.  No longer doubting her own thoughts or reality, Virginia is declared cured by the hospital staff board and released.

The movie-going public must have been drawn to the unusual subject matter and/or by de Havilland's star power because The Snake Pit was one of the top ten box office pictures of 1948.  It was nominated for Academy Awards for best motion picture, directing, actress, screenplay and music, and received an award for sound recording directed by Thomas T. Moulton.  Critics and reviewers in publications like Time, The New Republic, Variety, and the New York Times praised the quality of the film and applauded the filmmakers for producing a film that examined such an important and timely subject.  At once melodrama and social problem picture, entertainment and exposé, The Snake Pit remains significant today for helping us grasp some sense of the attitudes and feelings about mental illness and state hospitalization prevalent in the United States in the late 1940s.

There is evidence of mounting public concern over the care of the mentally ill in state run hospitals in the post-war years.  After World War II public demand on psychiatry and the already overcrowded state mental hospitals increased, and in 1945 the American Psychiatric Association released a set of standards to improve treatment in mental hospitals, public and private.  However, according to columnist Albert Deutsch, author of a 1948 exposé about the conditions in state mental hospitals titled The Shame of the States, "not a single state mental hospital meets, or has ever met, even the minimum standards set by the A.P.A. in all major aspects of care and treatment" ("Hearded Like Cattle," Time, 20 December 1948).

However, co-producer/director Anatole Litvak told the New York Times that his purpose wasn't to make a film that presented frightening images of the mentally ill or the "various scientific methods used to effect rehabilition."  He wasn't making a horror film.  Rather, he wished to encourage public concern about mental illness and the conditions in state mental hospitals.  Further, he intended the film "to reassure people that mental disorder is an illness which can be cured" ("Of Litvak and The Pit," New York Times, 7 November 1948, X5).  The structure of Litvak's film, awakening interest in a perceived social problem, illustrating some of the possible dangers involved, and then soothing fears by showing that the problem can be overcome through solutions already available, is characteristic of other social problem pictures I've written about on this blog, such as Traffic in Souls (1912), The Wet Parade (1932), and Confessions of a Nazi Spy (also directed by Litvak, 1939).  

Virgina trapped in ward 33, the titular snake pit. One of the few impressionistic shots in the film.

There's so much to write about this picture and topic that a blog post cannot possibly contain all of the questions let alone examine the answers.  So, I'm going to focus on one aspect of the filmmaking: Litvak's approach to identifying the nature of Virginia's illness.  In the film, the director allows us to experience two contrasting perspectives of reality at the same time by neatly dividing the scenes between what we see and what we hear.  With a few exceptions (see above), Litvak's camera maintains the perspective of an objective observer.  This has the effect of allowing us to view Virginia's and the other hospital patient's irrational behavior, and observe methods of treatment and management by the staff.  In the second perspective, Litvak and Moulton employ the sound of Virginia's interior voice, and other voices heard inside her head, to help us understand her delusional take on the occurances in the film.  By using the tools of cinema, Litvak contrasts these two perspectives on reality and aids the audience to understand Virginia's illness by comparing the reality of the picture with the sound of her paranoid interior monologue through voice over.  This technique is doubly effective for cinephiles because we typically expect voice over to confirm what we see on the screen not to cause doubt about its veracity or contradict it.

Litvak's method of contrasting what we see on the screen with the way the main character tells herself (and us) she perceives things has since become a familiar way to differentiate opposing perceptions of reality on film.  I wonder, what other approaches have filmmakers tried over the ensuing years to convince the audience that a character is mentally ill? or that a character's perception of reality differs from those around her? or that we in the audience might not be able to trust the version of reality that is being presented on the screen or through the speakers?  (For some reason I'm drawn to my David Lynch collection right now.)  What are some of your favorite films that explore these ideas and contradictions?  Other than Caligari some of mine include Schatten (1923), Un chien andalou (1929), Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974), Videodrome (1983), Jacob's Ladder (1990), Lost Highway (1997), Abre Los Ojos (1997), The Messenger (1999), Memento (2000), and Donnie Darko (2001).

--a more general question: what are some of your favorite films that either comment on mental illness and its treatment or borrow themes of mental illness or psychoanalysis for variations on familiar genres like horror, thrillers, melodrama, comedy?  Some of mine include, M (1931), Psycho (1960), Repulsion (1965), Le Roi de coeur (1966), Sisters (1973), One Flew Over the Coo-Coos Nest (1975), and Halloween (1978).

This post written by Thom Ryan
Copyright 2008 Thom Ryan Some rights reserved

Comments

[Chick Young]

I've enjoyed your blog immensely. I was anxious to see the 1948 post go up as 1948 was the year my favorite film of all time was released. The odds that you would choose that film were minuscule! The Snake Pit is a wonderful film and a great choice for this year. Please keep up this ambitious project, your blog is a real treat.

Oh, my fave film of all time? Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein!

Cheers

[Chick Young]

oh, and PS: regarding your query on films of mental illness? Several come to mind, but perhaps the one that hits far too close to home and whose potency has only increased since its original release would be, for me, Frederick Wiseman's Titicut Follies (1967).

[Thom]

Hello there Mr. Young, thank you for sticking with the blog. It really makes me feel good to know you enjoy it 'cause films of the past are among my favorite subjects and it's twice as nice to talk about them with fans and experts.

Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein happens to be a favorite of the author of one of my favorite blogs, Frankensteinia.Writing about it here would've been a real treat. What are some of things about it that make it a favorite of yours? Is it the spectacle of seeing A&C and the Universal monsters in the same flick, the look and feel of the picture, or a particular bit that stands out, or something else?

I'm a fan of another Abbott and Costello picture, The Time of Their Lives (1946) because it combines their slapstick shenanigans with the supernatural, and they take a break from the great but familiar material found in a lot of their pictures. There are a number of well-executed trick shots in that picture too--so Lou (one of the ghosts) can walk through walls and doors, for example. Have you seen that one? No Universal monsters show up, but it's a funny ghost story all the same.

--by the way, TCM is showing slapstick movies all day today. No A&C, but plenty of Chaplin.

[Thom]

Chick - I recall my parents being disturbed by a presentation of, or about, Titicut Follies that aired on PBS a long while ago, but I haven't seen it myself. IMDB trivia mentions that it was banned. Is it a fly-on-the-wall style documentary or something else?

Incidentally, I remember reading about Let There Be Light (1946), a documentary John Huston made about depression and other illnesses affecting soldiers returning from WWII, back when I was immersed in the war movies a few months ago. I think that was banned or suppressed too. I've been looking for that one.

[Jacqueline T Lynch]

Another great post, and welcome back. Your mention of psychiatric care for returning vets possibly influencing the film industry to take up the subject of mental illness is probably key among other driving forces. We had, after the horrors of war, grown up enough to tackle such a sensitive subject.

Before this, as far as the movies were concerned, mental illness was just madness and madness was just a plot device. Usually it was "mad scientists." It must have been tricky for those involved with this film not to resort to cliche, even in unthinking habit. Having just reviewed "Witness to Murder" (1950), this movie has the flavor of wanting to depict mental health care as progressive, but failing miserably. It is no expose, as is "The Snake Pit". It's just cliche.

Perhaps "The Three Faces of Eve" comes close to "The Snake Pit" in discussing mental illness and its treatment in a serious and thoughtful way. Still, the publicity for these films remains rather lurid, doesn't it?

[Thom]

Thanks Jacqueline. Indeed the publicity does sometimes seem to edge toward the lurid. Though that one sheet for The Snake Pit I added to the post avoids making it seem like a horror picture, the CU of de Havilland's frightened face certainly has shock and fear attached to it. I guess that's one way, to put it vulgarly, to put butts in seats. But Litvak said he wanted to avoid "pandering to morbid curiosity in dramatizing mental illness" in the Times article cited above, and he optioned Ward's book years before, while he was still in Capra's film unit at the end of the war, so I tend to think he was sincerely interested in the public debate over mental illness and how society chose to deal with it. In the late '40s that meant confinement in public or private mental hospitals and the various methods of treatment I mention in the post above. Litvak shows that part of the problem with this manner of treating the mentally ill was that public hospitals were under-funded and overcrowded. The advent of antipsychotic drugs and dehospitalization were still years away when this film was released and have troubling problems of their own--I hope a filmmaker examined these changes so I can write about the film and the subject again in a future FotY post.

Thanks for offering some examples of films that deal with the subject. Since viewing the split storytelling of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari I've been fascinated with the ways filmmakers have portrayed mental illness on film. Litvak chose to show us Virginia's behavior while allowing us to hear the paranoia of her inner voice so we know how she perceived herself and the things happening around her. It appears to be a novel approach to filming mental illness. Maybe there was an earlier use of this approach, maybe by Hitchcock (?), but I'm unaware of it.

[Chick Young]

Hi Thom,

Oh yes, I think I had seen every Abbott and Costello film by the age of 8. They played on Sunday mornings in the mid 70s for YEARS. The Time of Their Lives was and is a very personal favorite for two main reasons in addition to the ones you mention. First Marjorie Reynolds was a super cutie and second, it was one of the rare occasions where Bud and Lou were not teamed up (Little Giant also comes to mind) - and as such they really shine as separate personas. You may have caught that my online moniker of CHICK YOUNG is a nod to Bud Abbott's character in A and C meet F!

I wound up catching the Chaplin documentary, narrated by the late Sydney Pollack the other day, I had only partially caught it when it first aired. Thanks for reminding me about the Chaplin-a-thon!

As for Titicut? Well, your parents were quite right. It's far more unsettling than anything narrative cinema could "aspire" to. I haven't seen it in a few years and am particularly grateful for that. A few times was enough for me.

The Huston documentary you refer to is unknown to me. I shall make some inquiries of my own as to its scarcity. Perhaps its archived in a collection somewhere (UCLA, for example). I'll look into it -

All the best and thanks again for such a unique and interesting forum.

[movie_star]

Thom -

Another fantastic post! I was anxiously awaiting your return on August 1 and this post was definitely worth the wait. One of my favorite movies with a mental illness theme is "He loves me, He loves me not" starring Audrey Tautou. It's a movie where I thought I was watching one thing but it turned out to be quite different in the end.

When I was trying to figure out some of my favorite movies with this theme, I brainstormed a huge list and soon realized that this is an immensely popular topic that spans so many different genres. Why are we so fascinated with the mentally ill? They are portrayed as funny (the entire cast of "Crazy People"), eccentric (Jack Nicholson in "As Good As It Gets"), criminal (Dr. Octopus) , terrifying (Pick any horror movie with a psychotic killer), and genius (Russell Crowe in "A Beautiful Mind"). Maybe the fascination is because for most of us, mental illness is a great mystery and although we can see shades of "crazy" behavior in our own everyday lives (I have my paranoid moments!), we mostly keep things in check. Mostly...

Keep up the good work. Your loyal fans appreciate it! :)

[Maya]

One of my favorite films. And, as ever, an excellent treatment. Welcome back to the fold.

[Thom]

Movie_Star - I like your diverse list of characters and genres because it reinforces what Jacqueline commented about above. Since mad characters don't necessarily need other motivation for irrational behavior it's no wonder screenwriters have so often turned to them. Besides writing a character like that must be interesting if not fun. The flip side would appear to be pictures with psychoanalysis in them. Those I've seen from the 1940s, Spellbound (1945), Possessed (1947), The Snake Pit (1948), all place emphasis on a rational explanation for a character's irrational behavior. I expect that logical approach to continue as this blog moves into the next decade, but at some point overuse must inspire a turn to parody.

Thanks also for illustrating the universality of the theme in genre pictures. If we agree that the human significance of a concept is reinforced and reflected by the number of words we have for it (I found some thirty-one synonyms, including slang, for mental illness in a thesaurus) might we say the same about the number of motion pictures about it?

[Thom]

Michael - Thanks pal. I am s l o w l y catching up with your terrific blog too.

This picture is favorite of yours, eh? Is it the subject, the execution, or are you a de Havilland fan? Or all of the above? I haven't had a chance to bring de Havilland up in the comments section yet. I didn't realize she had such acting chops and somehow she looks even better on screen without makeup. She's excellent at sharing her character's disorientation, fear, desperation, and later determination in this picture, and deserved the Oscar imho. To be fair, I haven't seen Wyman's performance in Johnny Belinda (1948).