With its unusual twist, it's surprising that The Cobweb hasn't become a cult classic. This 50's studio picture combines the ever popular Hollywood topic of mental illness with interior decorating.

Young Dr. McIver (Richard Widmark) takes over a clinic run by an aging and increasingly erratic Dr. Devenal (Charles Boyer). Despite his best efforts to institute an innovative therapeutic environment of patient 'self-government' he is undone by the administration in a battle over drapes. Yes, drapes.

How novelist William Gibson (screenplay by John Paxton) stumbled on this unusual vehicle is unknown, but the film results vascillate between absurdist, comical, and dead serious.

The adminstrative secretary, Victoria Inch (Lillian Gish) is the loyal spinster secretary of the former administration who feels her role is being edged out by the new doctor. She orders drapes for the clinic's library. The new doctor's wife (Gloria Graham) feels she's not being included in her husband's new life. She orders different drapes. All of this after Dr. McIver decides that the best thing to increase his patients' sense of self-determination would be -- you guessed it -- to make drapes.

But the drape story isn't the only odd theme. The patients know they're dysfunctional and work hard on their recovery. But the entire staff's behavior grows increasingly bizarre as the film progresses %u2013 and they work just as hard on their denial.

Dr. McIver finds himself distanced from his narcisstic wife and instead attracted to one of his colleagues (Lauren Bacall). Meanwhile, Mrs. McIver is jealously undermining her husband's work by seducing the former director. Inch grows increasingly manic. And at least one of the nurses is a control freak in the style of Nurse Ratchett.

Most films of this kind would demonstrate a certain self-consciousness about such a portentious message -- 'See? We're all mad. We just don't know it.' But Minelli's direction contains not a whiff of soap opera irony, and the cast is good enough to carry it off for the most part, which is what makes The Cobweb worth the seeing. Without paying attention, even the viewer might miss the well made point (despite a somewhat pat ending): When it comes to sanity -- the emotional dividing line between those who can't function and the rest of us -- who are often at sea as to how to resolve our own 'normal' emotional tragedies -- is blurred, at best.