THE SNAKE PIT: Blu-ray (2oth Century-Fox, 1948) Twilight Time
I am reminded of
an old adage in Hollywood, where a director passionately informs his producer that the picture
they are about to make will lend ‘prestige’
to the craft of film-making. “You know
what prestige is, don’t you?” the director inquiries, to which the mogul
leans back in his chair and adds, “Sure…pictures
that don’t make any money!” An ‘important’ picture, if not a terribly
prepossessing ‘entertainment’,
further marred by its tacked-on optimistic finale, director, Anatol Litvak’s The Snake Pit (1948) is an oft’ harrowing
interpretation of mental illness and the fateful institutionalization of those writhing
in its debilitating aftershocks. The picture is loosely based on Mary Jane
Ward's 1946 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, and follows the
exploits of young newlywed and schizophrenic, Virginia Cunningham (Olivia de
Havilland) who attempts, with varying degrees of success, to navigate a journey
through the inner labyrinth of her mind, as well as the multi-level maze of bureaucracy
in this state-run hospital dedicated to her wellness. The Snake Pit affords de Havilland, yet another opportunity – post Warner
Bros. – to chew up the scenery. She was, in fact, Oscar-nominated (losing to
Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda) for
this rather over-the-top caricature of burgeoning insanity. De Havilland is one
of the finest actresses of any generation. But The Snake Pit is not her finest hour, playing to a full breadth of
histrionics that, at times, appear more hammy than genuine and do the part no
favors. Nevertheless, The Snake Pit is de Havilland’s showcase. So, it is a
little disheartening to find other, as notable actors present, as they remain
woefully underutilized in the Frank Partos/Millen Brand (with an uncredited
assist from Arthur Laurents) screenplay. Chief in these loses is Celeste Holm,
whose post-Gentleman’s Agreement
(1947) Oscar win and film career were – depending
on the source – either insidiously sabotaged by 2oth Century-Fox studio mogul,
Darryl F. Zanuck (after she rejected his amorous advances), or deliberately
tempered by Holm herself, who preferred stagecraft to celluloid – appearing only
sporadically in films thereafter, and usually always, as the gal on the side, in
service to other stars.
The other
unforgivable loss herein is Leo Genn, as the understanding psychiatrist, Dr.
Mark H. Van Kensdelaerik (a.k.a. Dr. Kik). Genn, who appeared on film
consistently, playing second string from 1935 to 1975, just three years shy of
his death from pneumonia, was a familiar face, oft overlooked, except for that mellifluous
voice. He will forever be known as Emperor Nero’s arbitrator of good taste,
Polonius in the 1951 costume colossus, Quo
Vadis – his finest performance. In The
Snake Pit, Genn adds a note of benevolence and invested empathy in Virginia’s
recovery, particularly after she suffers a hellish setback at the hands of Nurse
Davis (Helen Craig). Could Craig’s stern and steely-eyed Davis have been the archetype
for Louise Fletcher’s Nurse Ratchet in 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? But I digress. The Snake Pit also features such
prominent character actors as Betsy Blair (Hester), Beulah Bondi (Mrs. Greer)
and Lee Patrick (as an unnamed asylum inmate); intermittently presented as tragic,
weird or casual figures of fun; a waxworks, whose particular mental perspicacity is skewed,
and, in need of fine tuning. And finally, there is Mark Stevens as Virginia’s
ever-loyal and bewildered husband, Robert Cunningham. As congenial eye candy,
Stevens cannot hold his own against these heavy hitters – certainly, not de
Havilland’s shrieking and terrorized martyr to whom his unsuspecting publisher
is inexplicably drawn in a prolonged flashback that merely fills run time, but
adds no ballast to the plot.
The Snake Pit meanders through its purposeful, but dull vignettes,
some, in flashback, meant to Freudian-ize the hidden reasons for Virginia’s psychosis,
while others, told in the present, telescopically zero in on psychoanalysis’ fundamentally
flawed methods of progression as Dr. Kik and his staff force Virginia through nightmarish
‘experiments’ with drug and shock therapy, to unravel her subconscious and thus,
discover the proverbial ‘key’ to her locked door memories. And so, we work this case study
backwards, from Virginia and Robert’s ‘cute meet’. She is an aspiring author,
He’s a publisher’s assistant. Their awkward romantic gestation is…well…strange
to say the least, falling in love, but, after a brief separation in Chicago –
and unexpected reunion in New York – culminating in a quickie marriage and all
sorts of complications that cause Virginia to become inexplicably remote and
thoroughly despondent. Other flashbacks regress the audience all the way back
to Virginia’s childhood. As a precocious six-year-old, Virginia (Lora Lee
Michel) is unloved by her rather aloof mother (Natalie Schafer), but doted on
by her loving father (Damian O'Flynn) who, after taking
her mother’s side in an argument, is tearfully wished to die by the child –
and, even more ironically – does –
from a heart attack, leaving Virginia’s mother to bitterly blame her daughter
for the loss. We later learn, Mrs. Stuart remarried to a man who was not very
nice to Virginia, thus compounding the girl’s youthful insecurities about men
in general, and falling in love with any one man in particular. Like peeling
away the layers of an onion, this TripTik through Virginia’s shattered psyche
is supposed to ‘make sense’; hearing voices, losses of memory, prone to teetering
bouts of mania and melancholia.
Alas, attempting
to tell the tale from the inside out, with externalized points of view from Dr.
Kik and Robert, creates a bit of its own schizophrenic perspective. Which ‘interpretation’
is true? Certainly, the adult Virginia is steadfast that hers is the reality,
even when reality itself intrudes upon her fantasy world to prove otherwise. Reality,
as theorized by the men in Virginia’s life – has no first-hand knowledge of her
roiling inner conflict. So again, it is
only one piece of the puzzle we are getting. The Snake Pit opens with plain credits and an ominous overture composed
by Fox’s resident composer, Alfred Newman. From here, we meet Virginia
Cunningham, seated on a bench in the courtyard of Juniper Hill State Hospital –
an exclusively women’s psychiatric facility. She is comforted by fellow inmate,
Grace (Celeste Holm) who will turn up sporadically hereafter as something of
Virginia’s sobering conscience. Led back indoors for treatment, we are
hurriedly introduced to the other key players in Virginia’s mental saga; Dr.
Kik and Robert - her husband. Each is devoted to curing Virginia in their own
way. Virginia is, at first, so completely out of touch with reality she does
not even recognize Robert.
Dr. Kik encourages
Robert to reveal to him how he and Virginia first met. So, we get a backstory
in flashback. Robert was working for a Chicago publisher when Virginia tried to
get one of her stories published. Miserably
failing to sell her story, Virginia instead sets her mind to win Robert’s
heart. In no time at all, the two are inseparable, meeting for lunches at the
cafeteria and attending concert hall performances of the philharmonic to indulge
their mutual appreciation for classical music. Despite what appears to be a budding
romance, Virginia abruptly vanishes after suffering what appears to be a bout
of inexplicable anxiety. Uncannily, Robert
and Virginia happen to move to Manhattan at approximately the same time. After
providing Robert with the flimsiest of excuses for her absence (she just needed
to ‘find herself’) the couple gets reacquainted over their love of music.
Although Robert repeatedly proposes, Virginia acts thoroughly surprised at his
last overture of love, insisting Robert has no intention of marrying her. Virginia
frantically demands they tie the knot immediately. Three weeks later, they do at
a Justice of the Peace. Alas, life with Virginia is never ‘just a bowl of
cherries.’ Robert returns home from work to frequently find his wife gazing in
a state of near catatonia on the balcony of their cramped apartment. She is
unable to quantify what she has been doing with her time apart from him and
becomes agitated when pressed on this point of query. Eventually, Robert has
his wife checked into Juniper and placed under Dr. Kik’s care.
The rest of The Snake Pit charts a rather perilous journey
toward recovery, examining Virginia’s progress as much as the asylum’s
treatment of her and its other inmates. At Dr. Kik’s behest, Robert signs consent
forms to put his wife through months of electro-shock therapy – Virginia’s resistance
to this ghoulish experimentation, documented in a series of typed reports. In
between each session, Dr. Kik tries to gingerly probe Virginia’s mind for clues
to her past. He unearths a romantic dalliance with an older man, Gordon (Leif
Erickson) that resulted in the man’s death in a horrendous car wreck after
Gordon was distracted by Virginia’s sudden panic attack. Dr. Kik also begins to
realize Virginia’s basically unhappy childhood has played a major role in her torturous
adulthood. Because she had a terrible disagreement with her father as a little
girl, Virginia blames herself for his sudden death from a heart attack – a belief,
reinforced by her mother, who almost immediately distanced herself from
Virginia and later, remarried. At Juniper, we find the hospital regimented under
‘levels’ of progress, distinguished by the floor where patients reside. The
higher the floor number, the graver the prognosis. Under Dr. Kik’s care, Virginia gradually works
her way downstairs to the First Floor – perceived as the final step in a full
recovery. Robert suggests to Kik, perhaps his wife is well enough to be discharged
and placed in the care of his mother. Regrettably, during a routine critical
evaluation with Dr. Curtis (Howard Freeman), Virginia becomes belligerent and
anxious.
Nevertheless,
Kik proceeds to move his patient into a private room on the First Floor where
Nurse Davis, jealous of all the attention Kik is lavishing on Virginia, taunts her
into a hysteria from which she suffers a complete relapse. Locking herself in a
private bathroom, Virginia is lied to by Davis and lured into the open; restrained
in a straight-jacket and carted off to the 33rd Floor, a padded cell
crudely referred to as ‘the snake pit’
and reserved for the most hardcore and incurable cases. Placed in Dr. Terry’s (Glenn Langan) care,
Virginia meets several inmates whom she is able to acknowledge as being far
worse off than she and likely never to recover from their maladies. This,
seemingly, is Virginia’s first step toward a full recovery. Over time, under
Terry and Kik’s combined care, and with proper treatment, Virginia steadily
gains personal insight and self-awareness. The movie concludes, too
optimistically, with Virginia’s complete mental recovery; departing Juniper
with renewed confidence and Robert waiting to take her home.
Fascination
with psychoanalysis, used in the treatment of returning soldiers after WWI (who
suffered from what is today known as PSD) became a something of a pastime with
the rich throughout the 1930’s. It was 'suddenly fashionable' to be in psychoanalysis
– the cure-all for even the most commonplace woes. In the mid-1940’s this
trickle-down ambition of the profession - to unlock and analyze the secrets of
the human mind – hit movie screens like a sledgehammer. Whether coating the
proverbial ‘pill’ in a faux caper, as in Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945) or the trappings of a frothy romance (Random Harvest, 1942), or even exploiting
mental disease to explain away criminal activity (Crime Doctor, 1943), The
Snake Pit falls right in the middle of a period rife with interest in the psychiatric profession. In hindsight, it just may be Hollywood’s first
genuine aim at legitimizing mental illness and the scientific methodologies ascribed to
combat its devastating aftereffects. Ironically, Fox contract beauty, Gene
Tierney was first slated to star in the picture. Given Tierney’s later mental decline, had she appeared in The Snake Pit, it would have served as bizarre foreshadowing. A stickler for detail, director, Anatole
Litvak amassed a wealth of research before embarking upon this movie, mandating
that his cast and crew attend him at various mental institutions and lectures
given by leading psychiatrists to fully comprehend their undertaking.
For her part,
Olivia de Havilland immersed herself in case studies and observed with
considerable investment, the ‘in vogue’
therapies of the time, attending actual patients undergoing treatment. 2oth Century-Fox, one of the first studios to
shoot movies extensively on location, took its cast and crew to California’s Camarillo
State Mental Hospital for crucial sequences in The Snake Pit. And Litvak, herein, needs to be commended for his
documentary-like authenticity, illustrating, not only the process by which a
patient’s mental wellness might be restored, but also, in exposing the bungled bureaucratic
regimentation of institutions that allowed the race for a cure to occasionally
slip through the cracks – never again to be found. Ironically, it is in this
latter pursuit where The Snake Pit stumbles.
Litvak’s movie is too much a work of fiction to be held up as a truthful testament. Employing the gritty style of one of Fox’s vintage police procedural melodramas (albeit, without the chiaroscuro lighting),
The Snake Pit is too literal in its
impressions, setting aside entertainment value to deliver its message.
Pointedly, there
is too much truth in the fiction, and too much fiction in the truth – this tug
o’ war in bi-polar opposition, creating a disjointed viewing experience
that, even more ironically, falls flat and can seem, at times, rather tedious. The
idealized ending where, having waged war on Virginia Cunningham’s psyche,
both from within and without, the patient now emerges psychologically fit and able
to return to a normal life without fear of a relapse, is too immediate and much
too promising. Perhaps, upon viewing the rushes, Litvak realized what he had
created was a far more insidious portrait of mental illness than audiences would prefer to see. At its bleakest
moments, The Snake Pit is uncannily
disturbing; the most terrifying of its vignettes, perceived from Virginia’s
vantage when, locked in the large padded cell on the 33rd Floor with inmates, plagued by a vast assortment of mental diseases, left to
meander, shriek and yowl in their collectively dark and chaotic despair, we are
afforded a bird’s eye view of ‘the pit’: truly, rock bottom and a hopeless tomb
from which our heroine may never emerge. To simply do an about face from this
absolutely undiluted moment of despair and present Virginia as cured, smacks of
insincerity, both for her condition and the psychiatric profession – the latter,
perceived as mentalist/magicians, conjuring medical slights of hand to
mesmerize the mind into restored competency.
The Snake Pit arrives on Blu-ray via Twilight Time, interestingly,
within a month of U.K. third-party distributor, Indicator/Powerhouse’s competing
Blu-ray edition. While Indicator’s Blu-ray is region B locked, Twilight Time’s
is ‘region free’ – meaning, it will play anywhere in the world. Not owning the Indicator/Powerhouse
disc, TT’s is nevertheless, something of a letdown. While Indicator has
advertised their disc as having been sourced from a 4K remaster, TT makes no
such claim. TT’s Blu-ray is virtually free of age-related debris and artifacts.
But contrast levels appear artificially boosted, bleaching out fine details and
depriving the image of any solid, mid-range grays; also, no deep blacks. Most
everything registers in a mid-tonal gray; Leo Tover’s cinematography, looking very
anemic. Film grain is consistently rendered and indigenous to its source. TT
compliments this disc with an isolated score, showing off Alfred Newman’s
compositions to their best advantage. We
also get an audio commentary by film historian, Aubrey Solomon, Fox Movietone
Newsreels and two vintage radio broadcasts, plus, the original theatrical trailer.
Indicator advertises
the same Solomon commentary. Thereafter, their extras diverge, to include a brief
critical analysis of de Havilland’s career by film historian, Pamela
Hutchinson, and Under Analysis – a 31 min. appreciation by Neil Sinyard,
produced exclusively for Indicator’s Blu-ray, plus, an image gallery and a
36-page booklet, chalked full of being-the-scenes info, surely to delight the
collector. TT’s features a thin insert with liner notes by Julie Kirgo. Bottom
line: The Snake Pit is not a movie
you will want to watch over and over again, despite some quality acting on
display. TT’s Blu is a minor upgrade from Fox’s defunct ‘studio classics’ DVD;
a tad sharper, without being artificially sharpened. It still looks tired,
though. Regrets.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
3
VIDEO/AUDIO
3
EXTRAS
2
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