Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Twilightfa Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

JohnHowardReid NOTE: The following review is based on the full-length American version. The skilfully re-cut Australian version is a much better picture.COMMENT: Olivia De Havilland's performance is faulty and too obviously contrived, though she does seem real enough most of the time, unlike young Lora Lee Michel who convinces none of the time. Mark Stevens is none too solid in support and Leo Genn is too conventionally re-assuring. Fortunately Stevens' role is small but Genn's is large and his too-pat doctor is unconvincing enough to seriously fault the film as a whole. Celeste Holm has a funny role. She disappears from the film without explanation. Some of the patients are too much like caricatures to be believable. There is an obvious straining after effects in the acting, in the too-contrived script, too much weight on boring or unconvincing or stagily written, delivered and directed dialogue (note the scene in which all the kinky patients get a chance to display their particular brand of lunacy individually, each giving a turn one after the other like so many vaudeville acts). Contrivances in the plot ensure that the heroine gets a chance to sample all the wards, patients, nurses, doctors and treatments. These twists were probably not so obvious in the original novel but the mechanics are very patent in the film. Still director Litvak and his photographer and the art directors are at their best in the broad effects. The De H. story is too weighed down by her unsympathetic character, the too great a weight on dialogue, the clichés, and the director's penchant for unflattering (De H.) or too flattering close-ups (Genn). The main plot just isn't interesting enough because the De H. character herself isn't interesting or sympathetic enough. Oddly, the fact that she is so unglamorous weighs against her! If the doctors had been less cliched, the script might have got away with it, but as it is, the formula is not right. The film as a whole does not succeed, despite the power and the impact of many sequences. Litvak is at his best with groups, using effective crane and dolly shots, but otherwise the handling tends to look like superior TV.

kijii I have seen this movie several times and know that it received high critical acclaimed for its realistic depiction of what went on inside of psych wards at that time. It was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actress (Olivia de Havilland)—her fourth such nomination, Best Director (Anatole Litvak), Best Screenplay, and Best Music (Alfred Newman). It won an Oscar for Best Sound Recording. De Havilland gives a standout performance as the main character, Virginia Cunningham, who has suffered a psychotic breakdown and placed in an insane asylum for treatment after her husband, Robert (Mark Stevens). Leo Genn also gives a great performance has her doctor, Dr. Kik, who uses both electroshock treatment and drug-induced hypnosis to get to the root causes of Virginia's her deep-seated psychological problems that relate back to her childhood. I think it must be very difficult to stage group scenes of patients in a psych ward since the scenes in this movie, at times, seem just as campy as those in Shock Corridor (1963). The scenes must require a type of choreography which is hard to capture on film. In spite of the great character actors used in them: the best scenes with other patients are those in which de Havilland relates separately and more directly: Grace (Celeste Holm), Hester (Betsy Blair). Mrs. Greer (Behlah Bondi). Also, when you see Mrs. Stuart (Natalie Schafer)---Virginia's mother in a flashback to when she was a little six-year-old girl--you might recognize her as Lovey Wentworth Howell from Gilligan's Island.

evanston_dad I have no experience with mental institutions, not modern ones and certainly not those that existed in 1948. But I have enough experience with medical institutions and institutions in general to believe that "The Snake Pit," Anatole Litvak's harrowing film about one woman's journey through the hell of mental illness, gives a fairly accurate account. It's of course a bit histrionic and heavy handed in the way most films from that time period were (and many are still today), but that's just a product of age, not a flaw in the filmmaking. Olivia de Havilland gives a fierce performance as a woman struggling with an unnamed mental disorder that finds her in an agonizing cycle of progress that gives her hope of recovery coupled with setbacks that send her spiraling into black holes of despair. A kind doctor (Leo Genn) helps her to uncover and face the demons that caused her disorder in the first place. A lot of time is devoted to reconstructing scenes from her childhood, and her illness is blamed on an unloving mother and guilt over her father's death. But the cause of de Havilland's illness was less interesting to me than the politics and social structure of the mental institution itself. There is a class system in place in which the healthier patients are "superior" to those less healthy; they're essentially rewarded with nicer rooms, more space, better treatment from staff, while the worst of the patients are crammed together into what amount to brick and stone dungeons. And this class system is observed not only by the hospital staff, but by the patients themselves. What's most frightening about "The Snake Pit" is how little we've advanced in the perception and treatment of mental illness in the years since the movie was made.Celeste Holm, fresh off an Oscar for "Gentleman's Agreement," has a teeny-tiny role as a fellow inmate, while Betsy Blair, also in a small role, nevertheless makes a tremendous impact in a few scenes late into the movie."The Snake Pit" garnered six Academy Award nominations in 1948, including Best Motion Picture (20th Century-Fox), Best Director (Anatole Litvak), Best Actress (Olivia de Havilland), Best Screenplay (Frank Partos and Millen Brand) and Best Dramatic/Comedy Score (Alfred Newman), but won only a single award, that for Best Sound Recording, no doubt recognizing the film's cacophony of interior and exterior ravings. De Havilland was neck and neck with Jane Wyman for the Best Actress Oscar, but Wyman prevailed for playing another woman with mental trauma in "Johnny Belinda."Grade: A

dougdoepke Let's hope clinical conditions have improved in the last 60 years. Because, if Virginia (de Havilland) wasn't crazy going in, she will be after staying there. Those day-room scenes are genuinely unnerving. The patients mill around like berserk billiard balls, each in an enclosed world, pursued by their own internal demons. Then there's Hester's (Betsy Blair) frozen stare that chilled me as a kid and still does. What terrible psychic injury is behind that fearful silence, and who will help overcome the unspoken torment.Yes, it's also a case for reform, but an effective one without being preachy. Hundreds of the afflicted are warehoused around an over-worked staff. No wonder nurses like Davis (a great Helen Craig) become petty tyrants, trying to keep some order. Sure, Dr. Kik (Genn) is idealized and so in her own way is Virginia. At first I thought that was nothing more than typical Hollywood pandering. But now I see the two as providing needed hope, given negative opinions of the day. With humane care there is hope for these folks. That's the point of the dance—some kind of normalcy struggling to come out. At the same time, it all comes together in that gut-wrenching "Goin' Home"— something like the choral expression of a human basic. Okay, probably some of the emotional load has caught me up. But not everything is roses. Mark Steven's understanding hubby really does go too far. Some mixed feelings about Virginia's chances would add a needed dimension. Also, the unprofessional finger-wagging looks contrived and unimaginative. I'm sure too that Kik's Freudianizing is subject to debate. And truth be told, it comes across as pretty facile. Nonetheless, the movie's well structured for overall impact. And thanks be to TCF for the supporting players who remain vivid and impressive. So, whatever the drawbacks, the movie still packs a humane message within a dramatic punch. One that can still be felt, even six decades later.