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Olivia de Havilland struggles with her sanity in the engaging The Snake Pit |
Director: Anatole Litvak
Cast: Olivia de Havilland (Virginia Stuart Cunningham), Mark
Stevens (Robert Cunningham), Leo Genn (Dr Mark van Kensdelaerik “Dr. Kik”),
Celeste Holm (Grace), Glenn Langan (Dr Terry), Helen Craig (Nurse Davis), Leif
Erickson (Gordon), Beulah Bondi (Mrs Greer), Lee Patrick (Asylum inmate), Betsy
Blair (Hester), Howard Freeman (Dr Curtis)
Virginia Stuart Cunningham (Olivia de Havilland) wakes up on
a park bench with no idea where she is – and only the vaguest idea of who she
is – and reckons she could be anywhere from a zoo to a prison. She’s actually
in an asylum – or Juniper Hill State Hospital – and has been for some time,
struggling with a schizophrenia and anxiety-related condition and with no idea
of when – or if – she will ever leave. She is treated by the kindly,
professorial “Dr Kik” (Leo Genn) and generally fails to recognise her husband
Robert (Mark Stevens).
The Snake Pit is a
very earnest but dramatically engaging and even quite moving story of one
woman’s struggle to try and preserve her mental health, despite being stuck in
a system that is a complete lottery with some patients lucky enough to be cared
for and others dumped and forgotten. Litvak’s film is a passionate expose on
the conditions that lack of funding and public interest had allowed to prosper
in mental institutions in America, with parts of the facility little better
than a Dickensian work-house, others like something out of Dante’s Inferno. It was a passion project for
Anatole Litvak, who bought the rights to the book personally and pushed the
studio to fund the creation of the film.
The story is centred around Virginia’s experiences of the
asylum as she moves from ward to ward – low numbered wards being reserved for
those considered likely to leave, with the ward number increasing as the
prospect of the patient ever getting out of the asylum (or ever getting any
focus from the doctors) decreasing. The staff are harassed, overworked, underpaid
and frequently struggle with being heavily outnumbered by the patients, having
only a few minutes a day for each one. They are also a mixed bag – there seems
to be very little in the way of training – with some dedicated and caring, others
seeing the patients as at best irritants and at worst little more than objects.
Virginia’s real problems start when she gets on the wrong side of Ward 1 nurse
Davis (Helen Craig), an officious, domineering bully who treats her patients
like pupils in a finishing school and punishes ruthlessly any deviation from
her rules.

Litvak’s film also benefits hugely from the simply superb
performance by Olivia de Havilland. De Havilland brings the role such commitment
and such emotional performance, that she is largely to thank for making the
story (and not just the setting) as engrossing as it is. De Havilland is
gentle, vulnerable, scared but mixes it with touches of determination and also
carries with her a sensitivity that makes her as much a caring and gentle
figure as it does a victim. She appears in almost every scene and dominates the
film, handling the moments of quiet panic as well as she does the moments of
immense distress. Her increasingly sorry state as she progresses down through
the wards is heart-rendering, and her confusion and fear makes her someone we
care for deeply, even while her concern and care for her fellow inmates –
particularly a violent patient, played by Betsy Blair, who she takes under her
wing and helps recover some of her equilibrium – makes her admirable and less
of a victim.
Though lord knows she suffers enough, from claustrophobic
locked-in baths (her screaming fit as she fears drowning being all-but-ignored
by her dismissive nurses who have heard it all before) to being strapped into a
straitjacket for god knows how long (after being provoked into an angry
outburst by Nurse Davis). Around this she also undergoes bullying medical
examinations from doctor’s unfamiliar with her case to watching her fellow
inmates being mocked and laughed at my visitors. That’s not even to begin to
mention the ECT treatment she undergoes at the start of the film (“to bring her
back” from the edge of disappearing into a fantasy world), a series of detailed
and observed procedures which are clinically sinister.
Despite its many strengths, the film is dated in many ways.
The original book avoided all reasons for Virginia’s illness. The film works
overtime to give a “reason” for why she is, and of course this is rooted above
all to issues related to Virginia’s failure to relax into the “proper” role for
a woman in this man’s world. Her conditions are clumsily linked back to a
troubled relationship with her mother and father, that led to a lack of
development of maternal feelings. Guilt over a failed engagement has made her
uncomfortable with marriage and nervous of men. Many of these revelations come out
through a series of slightly clichéd therapy sessions that, for all the skill
of Leo Genn’s performance as the doctor, carry the “and now we know all the
answers” certainties of film psychiatry.
Attitudes like this date The
Snake Pit – so what if Virginia perhaps isn’t wild about marriage and isn’t
sure if she wants children – and the film works overtime to suggest what will
make her better above all is settling down into the sort of conventional life
represented by her dull-as-ditch-water husband Robert, flatly played by Mark
Stevens. While the film shows that healing like this takes time – and a lot of
it – it also can’t imagine a world where a woman might find a life outside of
the domestic norm healthier for them. But the film remains an emotional and
moving one – moments like the one near the end where the patients listen
enraptured, with enchanted faces, to a singer singing about home carry real
emotional force – and it has a simply superb performance from de Havilland.
Litvak’s film maybe slightly dated, but it’s still an impressive piece of work.
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