Category: Celeste Holm

THE SNAKE PIT (1948)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Anatole Litvak
CAST: Olivia de Havilland, Leo Genn, Celeste Holm, Natalie Schafer [aka Mrs. Howell on Gilligan’s Island…how about that?]
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 100%

PLOT: A young woman’s life is torn apart when she suffers a mental breakdown and is admitted to an institution.


For much of its running time, The Snake Pit remains firmly in the realm of reality without succumbing to melodrama, as was symptomatic of so many film dramas of the 1940s.  That’s what makes it mildly disappointing when, in the last reel, we get a nice little summation of the origins of our heroine’s dilemma, and she bravely makes a series of decisions that result in a happy ending.  Naturally, that was the case in real life, as well.  The film is based an autobiographical novel by Mary Jane Ward, who spent eight months in a mental institution after a nervous breakdown.  I don’t begrudge the happy ending, you understand.  I just wish it didn’t feel as rushed as it does.

But I’m quibbling.  This is a fine film.  The Snake Pit was another in a series of Daryl F. Zanuck productions intended as “message pictures”, movies that addressed real issues in contemporary society.  The Grapes of Wrath (1940) dealt with the Dust Bowl and harsh labor conditions.  Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) was one of the first films, if not THE first, to openly condemn casual anti-Semitism in “polite” society.  The Snake Pit is said to be the first mainstream film to realistically depict conditions in America’s mental institutions at the time.  If so, the filmmakers really went for the jugular in their first at-bat.  In its own way, this is as harsh and unforgiving a film as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  There’s even a sequence involving shock treatments that are as effective as anything else I’ve seen along those lines.

The story begins intriguingly, as we open on the lovely open face of Virginia (a deliberately un-made-up Olivia de Havilland) as she wonders mentally what she’s doing outside on this bench.  A man we don’t see asks her a series of questions, and she has little mental conversations with herself before she answers.  Then the camera pulls out, and there is no man, just another woman telling her it’s time to go back inside.  Inside where, she wonders?  Then she’s herded with a bunch of other women back into the main hall of the Juniper Hill State Hospital.  She starts to panic.  What is she doing here?  Is she crazy?  She doesn’t feel crazy.  The reasons for her stay provide the central mystery to the film.

(Incidentally, Stephen King apparently saw this film on TV as a youngster…which may account for the numerous appearances of the Juniper Hills psychiatric facility that appears in many of his novels and stories, including It, The Dark Half, and Needful Things.  When you win on “Jeopardy”, I’ll let you know where to mail my half of the winnings.)

De Havilland’s performance is extraordinary.  Her talent is undeniable, but it’s notable that one of the silver screen’s great beauties went without makeup, wore clothes two sizes to big, and even dropped some weight to make her look more fragile.  This was my first time watching the movie, and I was astonished at her appearance.  When she flies into rages, or pleads for mercy, or desperately tries to remember her past, you really believe it.

In a series of flashbacks, we discover that Virginia Stuart was a frustrated author who met her future husband in Chicago, in the offices of the company that had just rejected her manuscript.  There was a whirlwind romance that ended when she simply ran out on him and disappeared, only to show up six months later in New York, where he had moved…six months previously.  (I don’t know about you, but that’s red flag territory in my mind, but whatever.)  Their romance picked up where it left off, there was a ceremony at City Hall, and they enjoyed married life…for about a week.  At which point Virginia behaved erratically, declaring that she will never love any man, that no man can love her, and flatly denying that today is May 12th, no matter what it says on the newspaper.  Virginia’s husband admits her to Juniper Hill, and it’s here where her troubles REALLY begin.

The film’s depictions of life on the various wards of the asylum are tame by today’s standards, but they are no less disturbing.  There are the usual cast of off-kilter characters wandering the halls, mumbling to themselves or being unreasonable, but there is something indefinably…I don’t know, squirmy about seeing this kind of behavior in such an old movie.  At least for me.  When it’s played for real and not for laughs, in black and white, in 1948, something about that place and those people became much more real to me, at least as real as McMurphy’s fellow travelers, or maybe even more so.  I’m unable to put it into words.  When someone in Cuckoo’s Nest dances by themselves in a corner or wants his cigarettes, it’s kinda funny.  In The Snake Pit, when a woman dances by herself, or another covers her face with her hair and paces around muttering that it’s her right to cover her face…it was creepy.  Is it the black-and-white cinematography?  Is it the shortage of comic relief?  Is it because they’re women instead of men?  Discuss.

(There’s even a head nurse who seems like the prototype for Nurse Ratched: a no-nonsense, by-the-book authoritarian who makes no bones about disliking Virginia.  When Virginia is given a typewriter for therapeutic reasons, the nurse reminds her: “Don’t go thinking you’re better than the rest of us just because you’re a writer.”  Talk about terrible bedside manner, geez…)

Interestingly, I didn’t find Virginia’s behavior all that “crazy.”  She has problems with her memory, she tends to fly off the handle at trivial matters, and she once bit the finger of an arrogant doctor who was waving it in her face unnecessarily.  Frankly, that sounds like something I would do on a bad day.  Virginia’s conversations with her doctor, Doctor Kik (Leo Genn), are the only things that keep her tethered to reality.  These conversations are handled extremely well.  I found myself thinking of another famous movie about psychiatry in the ‘40s: Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), which was not so concerned with legitimate psychiatry as it was with making sure Bergman and Peck wound up together at the end.  In that film, the conversations between doctor and patient are full of double-speak and heavy-handed metaphors.  In The Snake Pit, I found it interesting that, whenever Dr. Kik makes a small breakthrough with Virginia, he never pushes the matter.  He simply calls it a day and picks it up tomorrow, armed with new information.  I’m no doctor, but that seems way more realistic to me.

I went into The Snake Pit expecting a semi-watered drown treatment of insanity and mental institutions.  Instead, I got a film that is remarkably effective and powerful, containing a performance from Olivia de Havilland that might seem like a lot of histrionics at first, but which is the very definition of someone completely at the mercy of mood swings beyond her comprehension.  They say that only the insane never wonder if they’re crazy.  If that’s the case, Virginia is as sane as they come, wondering over and over again why she does what she does, why she’s been thrown into this place.  She comes across as someone who desperately wants someone to listen to her.  Thankfully for her, someone does.  If everyone were as lucky as she is, maybe there’d be a lot more happy endings in the world.

ALL ABOUT EVE

By Marc S. Sanders

Today’s actresses can lobby and vie to be Wonder Woman or Black Widow or Jane Bond. Yet, what so many filmmakers and actors fail to recall are the powerhouse performances of yesteryear that didn’t require guns and magic lassos. Movies shouldn’t simply be super heroes and villains in spandex and leather. No movie is a better example of this argument than Joseph L Mankiewicz’ 1950 Best Picture winner All About Eve.

This is also the only film in history to have four actresses nominated for acting awards – Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter. What an accomplishment!!!

Davis is Broadway legend Margo Channing, a sexy, tough, cigarette smoking broad who grew up and keeps her social life within the limelight. She’s a warrior among the Hollywood and New York elite. When her friend Karen Richards (Holm) welcomes a mousy young girl in a raincoat backstage to meet the famous Miss Channing, it becomes more than just a quick hello. This girl is Eve Harrington who proudly admits to following Margo’s career from San Francisco all the way to Broadway waiting outside the theatre on each performance night for that opportunity to meet the legend in person.

Upon introduction, Eve shares her tragic story of growing up poor and losing her husband in the war. Margo and Karen are taken with Eve, and now the young ingenue has wielded her way into the upper crust life among the pomp and circumstance. Margo’s test of her own celebrity seems to come unexpectedly as it occurs to her and her smarmy personal assistant Birdie (Ritter) that maybe Eve is angling for a way to fill Margo’s big shoes along with her wardrobe and stage costumes.

The elite are intruded upon by this outsider. Karen’s friendship to her playwriting husband Lloyd (Hugh Marlowe) and her friendship to Margo is tested by Eve’s surprising manipulations. As well, Eve is making herself more aware to Margo’s younger lover and stage director Bill (Gary Merrill). Eve also finds ways to build an acting career on the shoulders of these show biz upper class by eventually winning the opportunity to be Margo’s understudy.

The outsider who narrates these developments is the famed theatre critic, Addison DeWitt (a charming and cultured George Sanders who won the Oscar). DeWitt might not get welcomed to every exclusive black tie party in town as he’s “the critic” but that’s fine for it’s how he survives in his career. He’ll recruit a young naive actress like a newcomer played by Marilyn Monroe to maintain a stay within the social circle, and soon he’ll ride along on Eve’s journey for personal gain.

Mankiewicz’ script is brilliantly witty, absolutely biting and sharp. One of the best moments in film belongs to Bette Davis wearing a gorgeous dark evening gown designed by the legendary costumer Edith Head, and used as Margo’s armor ready for social battle. Davis declares “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” No line could be so forthright in what to expect of a film like “All About Eve.”

This picture is ranked at the top of many “greatest film” lists. As it should be. This is not a sweeping biographical epic. Rather, it’s a lot of story branches that begin at the introduction of one character and expand in various directions among a handful of others who become disarmed by her ongoing presence. It’s not even that simple as Mankiewicz writes about Eve’s duplicity and how she manages to collide one piece of her destruction with another kind of destruction elsewhere, and the victims are simply blindsided.

Anne Baxter certainly had me fooled as Eve. She’s sweet and innocent on the surface and soon an inner and more evil shell emerges. Bette Davis looks spectacular and delivered one the best female performances of the last hundred years. She can carry herself and keep her guard up and authority in place. There’s a rich and commanding history about Margo that seems easy to believe. She is the queen of Broadway at the film’s beginning. Yet, for a moment her guard is let down and Mankiewicz gives us that window of time for his showcase.

Mankiewicz effectively opens his picture with Eve winning a very exclusive show biz award. She graciously approaches the podium to accept and deliver her speech. However, there are a select handful of individuals who withhold their applause of celebration. Then he flashes back to how we’ve come to this particular moment. It’s a great opening leaving me curious with a bunch of why questions. To watch this sequence the first time leaves you curious. To watch it on a second or third time is to be in on Addison DeWitt’s exclusive story of show biz scheming and diva one-upmanship. I only wonder if Joseph L Mankiewicz was as keen as George Sanders’ character to foresee how much life will come from Eve Harrington’s intrusion upon the lives of Margo & Bill and Karen & Lloyd. Before the age of desperate “if it bleeds, it leads” gossip rags, All About Eve was the real storyteller.