ChikPapa Very disappointed :(

Mabel Munoz Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Fulke Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

JohnHowardReid Copyright 26 July 1947 by Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Hollywood: 29 May 1947. U.S. release: 26 July 1947. U.K. release: 12 January 1948. Australian release: 18 March 1948. 9,755 feet. 108 minutes. NOTES: Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, Joan Crawford, losing to Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter.COMMENT: Possessed is rather heady stuff even if it could stand some sharpening and trimming. Until the first flashback it is a fully engrossing exercise in screen craftsmanship with Bernhardt excelling himself with such inventive directorial touches as the use of a subjective camera in the first hospital scenes with the camera tracking through the corridors on the trolley and doctors peering eerily into the lens. Indeed throughout the entire film, there is a superlative creation of atmosphere - the dark menacing lake house with its massively balustraded stairway and oppressive furniture, the invalid portrayed only by a querulous voice apart from the brief flash of the drowned figure rising into view from the murky waters of the lake, a subjective camera dollying through the shadowy passageways, the rain lashing the windows, the wind howling and chattering in the chimneys, the tinkling of Schumann on the piano - direction, photography, music, sound effects, art direction all coalesce brilliantly in places. At other times, alas, things are somewhat dull - particularly in some of the scenes with Van Heflin, an unsympathetic character whom the actor seems to be unsure how to play. Instead of letting the character stride across the screen in a full-blooded manner to match the dynamic playing of Miss Crawford, Heflin seems to be too restrained and too concerned with not making his characterization too unsympathetic, and as a result he seems weak and his performance pallid.Joan Crawford, as usual, is terrific, playing all stops out with the full melodramatic punch the script requires. Geraldine Brooks is also remarkably accomplished in a difficult role in which she is required to register many different changes of mood and attitude which she does most convincingly. Raymond Massey also has some marvelous histrionic opportunities, though he fails to take full advantage of them and plays his role in too straightforward a manner. The support cast is solid, though Stanley Ridge's cool analyst seems a little too studied (perhaps deliberately to contrast with the more professional approach Moroni Olsen brings to a similar role).Production values are superlative and a special tribute should be made to the special effects so skillfully and at times dazzlingly directed by William McGann.OTHER VIEWS: Crawford evokes all our heartfelt sympathy in this extremely polished film noir. It's given the Warner Bros class "A" treatment in every department and one suspects that the original Cosmopolitan magazine novelette was considerably enhanced for this masterly screen adaptation. Van Heflin is well cast as the heel, whilst the excellent Raymond Massey and Geraldine Brooks come close to rivaling Miss Crawford for our attention. Fluidly inventive direction joined with moody yet attractive photography in effective sets (particularly the gloomy lake house) all keep our eyes firmly where they belong - on the screen! -- JHR writing as George Addison.

cjh668908 Possessed (1947) stars Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, Raymond Massey, and Geraldine Brooks. Crawford also made a movie titled Possessed in 1931 while with MGM. Basically the movie is about a mentally unstable woman who is obsessed with her ex-lover. This 1947 Warner Bros. movie is very much on the dark side - film noir at its finest, something Warner Bros. excelled at in the 1940s. The opening shot of Crawford walking down the streets of the city in a daze is classic. This black and white movie has a lot of great camera angles to go along with shadowy and dim environments that make this a film noir classic. The acting is superb, with Crawford giving a career performance and Heflin giving a great performance himself. This is one of those movies that gets better and better as it goes along. Franz Waxman's musical score is great as well - dark and haunting at times.Crawford was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in this film, but didn't win (should have). This DVD has a great 10 minute feature about the movie and its status in the film noir category of movies. I also enjoy Dr. Drew Casper's enthusiastic audio commentary (as a special feature option).If you want to see a quality movie that's on the dark side, see Possessed. Highly recommended.

Claudio Carvalho A woman wonders through the streets of Los Angeles seeking out a man named David. She goes to a diner and the clients call an ambulance that takes her to a hospital. She is sent to the psychiatric wing with catatonic stupor and Dr. Willard (Stanley Ridges) diagnosis that she has nervous disorder and injects some medicine to calm her down.She tells that she is a nurse named Louise Howell (Joan Crawford) that takes care of a paranoid woman named Pauline Graham in the family house in an island. Louise falls in an unrequited love with their neighbor, the construction engineer David Sutton (Van Heflin). When David ends their love affair, Louise becomes obsessed for him and David finds a job position in Canada with Louise's master Dean Graham (Raymond Massey).Sooner Pauline dies in an accident and the Graham family moves to Washington. Louise is hired as a tutor of Dean's young son Wynn, and his teenage daughter Carol Graham (Geraldine Brooks) blames Louise for the death of her mother. Later Dean proposes to marry Louise and Carol accepts her as stepmother. When David returns from Canada, Carol is a beautiful wealthy young woman and the opportunist David decides to marry Carol for money. Meanwhile, Louise has a deterioration of her mental state and is schizophrenic; when she learns that David will marry Carol, she takes and ultimate decision."Possessed" is an engaging and melodramatic film-noir where the lead character gets insane and obsessed for an unrequited love for a construction engineer. Joan Crawford has an awesome performance and in the beginning of the story she is totally deglamourized dressed like an ordinary woman. There are two minor flaws in the plot since her relationship with David is never seen while there are too much explanation about her madness process and I am not sure whether they follow a scientifically supported or not. My vote is eight. Title (Brazil): "Fogueira de Paixão" ("Bonfire of Passion")

sdave7596 "Possessed" released in 1947, gives Joan Crawford one of her best performances at the height of her popularity at Warner Brothers. Crawford had won an Oscar just the year before for "Mildred Pierce" so she was red-hot when she made this film. Crawford stars as Louise, a seemingly cool, detached nurse who cares for an ill woman (whom we never see) who is married to a wealthy man named Dean (Raymond Massey). Louise has also just been dumped by her lover David (Van Heflin) whom she was very much in love with. Louise becomes infatuated with David, seeming to almost stalk him. On the rebound, she marries Dean (whose wife is now dead), much to the dismay of his adult daughter Carol (Geraldine Brooks). Gradually, Carol and Louise become friends. Louise then almost snaps when she learns Carol and David are seeing one another; her odd behavior becomes even odder, telling lies, imagining she was involved in the death of Dean's first wife, etc. This is where the movie veers off course: Louise confronts David about his relationship with Carol, shoots him, and then ends up wandering the streets and then in the psychiatric ward of a hospital. The film just explains it all away as psychoses and nothing more -- although in the real world of 1947 psychiatry that probably wasn't uncommon. The film is uneven at time, and the script slightly lacking, but the performances are first rate. Van Heflin has one of his better roles as a callous, arrogant playboy, and Geraldine Brooks is fine as Carol. Raymond Massey is his usual reliable self, playing the long-suffering husband role quite well. But make no mistake: this is Joan Crawford's show, and she dominates and fascinates throughout.