The Snake Pit (1948)
The Snake Pit Photos
Movie Info
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Cast
as Virginia Stuart Cunningham
as Robert Cunningham
as Dr. Mark Kik
as Grace
as Dr. Terry
as Miss Davis
as Gordon
as Mrs. Greer
as Asylum Inmate
as Asylum Inmate
as Asylum Inmate
as Asylum Inmate
as Asylum Inmate
as Dr. Curtis
as Mrs. Stuart
as Ruth
as Margaret
as Dr. Jonathan Gifford
as Miss Hart
as Miss Bixby, the Ward Nurse
as Valerie
as Mr. Stuart
as Virginia at Age 6
as Nurse Vance
as Celia Sommerville
as Hester
as Miss Greene
as Miss Seiffert
as Lola
as Tommy's mother
as Young Man
as Nurse
as Patient
as Patient
as Patient
as Patient
as Patient
as Patient
as Patient
as Patient
as Singing Inmate
as Miss Servis
as Gertrude
as Doctor Somer
as Nurse
as Virginia at Age 2
as Miss Neumann
as Young girl
as Countess
as Visor
Critic Reviews for The Snake Pit
All Critics (6) | Top Critics (1) | Fresh (6) | Rotten (0) | DVD (2)
It's entertaining enough in a hysterical sort of way, even if it never matches up to the excesses of Fuller's later Shock Corridor.
[Olivia] de Havilland does as much as she can with what she's given.
This remains one of the best screen explorations of mental illness and its treatment.
As one of Hollywood's first "serious" chronicles of life in an asylum, the film is uneven, containing some intelligent observations but also lurid sequences and simplistic psychological explanations.
For the audience of today, the primary draw of the picture is watching Olivia de Havilland deliver a particularly terrifying performance.
Audience Reviews for The Snake Pit
An underrated gem. It's all about the performance and de Havilland's is utterly brilliant!
Super Reviewer
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.
Super Reviewer
Few performances have equaled the raw power of Olivia de Havilland's in The Snake Pit. In the film, de Havilland plays Virginia, a young woman who suffers a mental breakdown and is committed to psychiatric hospital. We follow her treatment, diagnosis, and suffering as she climbs out of and falls back into the snake pit (in ancient times, the film explains, an insane person was lowered into a pit of snakes, the rationale being any sane person would be driven insane by the process, thus the opposite would occur for the insane). De Havilland is so amazing it's easy to overlook the story (which is quite well-written) or the direction (which is also amazing). In spite of all this, the film only won one oscar, for best sound recording. In the history of classic film, this one can get lost in the shuffle, and that's a shame.
Super Reviewer
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