Snake Pit, The (1948)
Director: Anatole Litvak
Honors:
It was one of the first motion pictures to attempt a realistic
portrayal of mental illness and with careful research by its director and star The Snake Pit does its finest to tackle
the very sensitive subject. Praised for its acting, enthralling story, and
portrayal of the rarely thought of troubles of psychiatric wards, the film left
an impact with audiences that facilitated rethinking about how the mentally ill
are treated. The harrowing performance of leading lady Olivia de Havilland
would earn the long praised actress’ performance to be considered her finest
work of her career.
The Snake Pit is a
drama about a young lady as she battles her sanity within the confines of a mental
institution. Virginia Cunningham (Olivia de Havilland) is a young, kind, pretty
lady that finds herself in overcrowded state ran mental asylum with no memory
of how she got there. With the aid of a kind psychiatrist, Dr. Kik (Leo Genn)
she is able to piece together her background and mental state. Depicted in a
series of flashbacks we are presented how Virginia came to be committed by her
loving and supportive husband, Robert (Mark Stevens), following a severe mental
breakdown shortly after being wedded. Virginia experiences the flaws of the
institution’s tiered systems, seeing first hand ill treatment by a vengeful
nurse, landing her in the bottom rung of care known as “the snake pit,” a ward
where the severe cases are dangerously locked in a large room together left to
roam amongst each other. Virginia comes to mentally understand and cope with
the system and with the aid of Dr. Kik connects her breakdown to unfortunately
scarring events of her childhood that linked her feeling of love with deep
emotional pain. With her new understanding and outlook Virginia recovers enough
to be release from the hospital reunited with her husband and the world.
This picture takes on its subject matter head on with
earnestness in what one can consider a very gripping movie. Vastly different
from how other pictures ever looked at individuals suffering with mental
illness, the film puts the viewers in the shoes and mindset of a patient
suffering from confusion that found her in the mental hospital. We, the audience,
ride along in her mind as she pieces together her own past while dealing with
the nature of the flawed hospital staff and the danger of being surrounded by
other, sometimes more troubled cases. Olivia de Havilland’s performance is deep
and genuine with a portrayal that makes us believe this glamourous actress is
truly suffering from mental issues, desperate to find sanity. The way the film presents
mental illness is praise worthy as its Hollywood-ized version of these deeply
troubling issues delivers that deep connection desired to depict the dangerous
and at times disgusting setting, while allowing the troubled patients to appear
appealing as characters.
Director Anatole Litvak who delivered to us earlier in the
same year Sorry, Wrong Number once
again captures the suspense of mental anguish. Here he brings to life the novel
of Mary Jane Ward, a tale inspired by her own breakdown and time in mental
hospital. Unafraid of bringing his camera in close to capture the little
intricacies of emotion on his leading character’s face, Litvak once again
delivers heavy emotion to his stories with subtle actions and creativity. His
staging of characters, framing of shots, and use of settings allow him to
create a vast array of emotional states for the character of Virginia. By
bringing the camera in closer and surrounding her with a number of the
supporting characters it created a feeling of suffocating claustrophobic anxiety
for Virginia. He equally portrays the clearing of her mind by staging the
camera further back, in wider shots, opening up the room, allowing us to feel how
she is able to see things with more openly with a greater understanding.
To best understand the complicated nature of the mentally
ill and their hospitals both Litva and de Havilland spent several months
visiting mental institutions, mingling with staff and patients, gaining first
hand experience and knowledge of the subject matter that were to portray. Olivia
de Havilland threw herself profoundly into her research discovering how both a ostensibly
normal person can be disturbed and how normal the most disturbed regarded cases
could actually be, discovering her character in new mindset that appealed to
her and the audience. This would easily be the most challenging performance of
her career, and to aid in her believability
she lost weight for the role,
creating a gaunt, frail appearance of a woman struggling with her sanity. The
performance would earn her, a recent Oscar winner, yet another nomination for
Best Actress, only to fall short of the prize due to heavy completion in that
year’s competition in the category. Still her portrayal of Virginia is
considered one of, if not the best performance of her career.
Mark Stevens’ portrayal of Virginia’s supportive husband
provided the emotional support the story needed to show a yearning for her to
get better as mentally troubled patients of the era were not treated with much
care. This ill treatment is manifested throughout the feature with the best
example in the form of Nurse Davis, played by Helen Craig, who portrays the role
as frustrated, unsympathetic, and at times vengeful; a precursor of Nurse
Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Nest. Dr. Kik played by English actor Leo Genn is the sympathetic psychoanalyst
and the only staff member who appears to truly care for Virginia to get better
and be released. His performance is a bit stereotypical as the pipe-puffing
intellectual, albeit it more youthful than one would expect. His character suffers
from over-simplicity with a laser focused on Virginia’s wellness despite the
hospital’s vast overcrowding, but this construct of Kik is obviously to aid in the
plot. Despite these lacking matters of believablity his performance plays well
the part of compassionate fatherly figure that pieces the puzzle that is
Virginia back together.
Receiving reasonably favorable reviews, the film’s great
impact was felt in how the public would look at mental hospitals after viewing The Snake Pit. The feature takes a look
at a few issues that troubled such institutions including overcrowding, abusive
staff members, poor program structuring, and even a look at the controversial
practice of electro shock therapy. Actually the electro shock therapy is not
presented as a negative in the film, but seeing it through the eyes of Virginia
permits the audience to feel the anticipation of the frightening procedure as
she is constrained and forced through the painful process. Similar to a dentist’s
drill this is one of those few things that can make a viewer’s body cringe in
pain while watching the scene play out. As a result many states saw reform within
mental institutions and their practices with 20th Century-Fox going
as far as using claims in publicity material.
Personally, I found The
Snake Pit to be quite a attention-grabbing film to watch despite its slow
moving plot. Its portrayal of the mind following a mental breakdown works well,
as it presents its surrounding world as disorienting and frightening in a
rather calm manner. The movie is not quite as impactful as it was in 1948, but
it still stands up and a very fine film and its history speaks for itself. De
Havilland probably deserved the Academy Award for her performance, but losing
to Jane Wyman for her role in Johnny
Belinda would not be a upset. The
Snake Pit is a nice little gem of the late 1940s, a fresh surprise of Hollywood
drama during a period when glamorous pictures grabbed most of the attention.
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