Olivia de Haviland gives a brilliant performance as Virginia Stuart Cunningham, a young woman committed to a mental institution after a "nervous breakdown".
This is one of the first flims to deal with mental illness on a serious adult level, and it is sometimes sad and sometimes harrowing to watch. Virginia spends
several months in various wards of the hospital -- the higher the ward number, the worse off you are -- moving up and down in wards as she recovers and then relapses. She receives treatment such as hydrotherapy and shock treatments, which are treated much more gingerly that most other, more graphic, examples in other films.
While the plot of this film is interesting, what held my attention were the other patients in minor roles and background. Various mental illnesses and symptoms are featured, including bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia and paranoia, delusions of grandeur, aural hallucinations and persecution. To know that there are people all over the world who suffer as these women did in this film is painful to imagine.
The film is a slower version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, without the black humor. And it does move slow at times, when the doctor is explaining in detail the possible explanations for Virginia's illness. The only thing that keeps it from being five stars is the slightly manipulative scene between Virginia and Hester, the distrustful mute girl Virginia has befriended, and a few times when de Havilland fell back into the posturing that so many actresses in the 40s adopted. Otherwise, director Anatole Litvak should be commended for this fine film.
September 12, 2007
