Snake Pit, The (1948)
Thursday, February 26, 2009 at 9:29PM The Snake Pit
The title of director Anatole Litvak’s groundbreaking 1948 film The Snake Pit, based on the novel by Mary Jane Ward, refers to the medieval practice of throwing the mentally ill, literally, into a pit of vipers. The argument being that such an occurrence, which would drive a well person mad, should surely jolt the insane back into sanity.
While the current practices of the mental health field have come great lengths since those dark times it is shocking to realize how little society’s perception of the mentally ill has changed. Only a monster would blame sufferers of diabetes, cancer, or Down’s syndrome for their own problems or insinuate that they were faking their illness. Yet, the mentally ill among us are continually regarded by a large portion of society as either weak willed, questionably afflicted, or simply goldbrickers.
Unfortunately, the film and television communities play a large part in these misconceptions. The mentally ill are rarely portrayed positively or sympathetically in entertainment circles. More so than ever they are shown as villainous or shunned. The deranged, psychotic killer has become such a staple of the industry that it is rare to find a thriller, action picture, horror film, or psychological drama without one. These sensationalized stereotypes do little to offer an understanding of an already fear-fueled perception of one of our severest health issues.
The number of mental institutions here in America has, for good and ill, decreased significantly over the past forty years. The discovery and use of psychotropic medicines has allowed many people, who would have otherwise been committed, to live relatively normal lives outside the confines of an institution. The problem, however, is in the lack of funding for the institutions that remain and the ever-increasing cost of medication for those who require it.
This lack of funding, thanks to the “trickle down” and “No tax” policies of a certain political party has not only caused the widening chasm between rich and poor but, in terms of mental health care, has replaced the institutions for mental health with the ersatz facilities of urban streets and prisons. Places where a large portion of America’s mentally ill now reside. Yet another giant blow to the dream of healthier living, understanding, and quality of life for all, courtesy of the “small government” mindset.
It is remarkable how film use to galvanize people and have positive influence. After its release, The Snake Pit was responsible for legislative change in twenty-six states relating to the mentally ill.
The film was almost never made.
Mary Jane Ward’s novel was a phenomenon. An instant best seller, it was not an autobiography but a fictionalized account of her experiences during her eight and a half month confinement to a mental institution. It was quite an eye opener for the naïve public as Ward described the unsanitary conditions, callous indifference of doctors, often cruel treatment by staff members, and the barbaric “therapeutic” techniques of the day (ice baths, electroshock, straitjackets). She showed the political and financial side as well; overworked staff, overpopulation in the wards, lack of funding for research, equipment, beds and other necessities, and treatment based more on time and resource constraints than actual concern for wellness.
Bennett Cerf, then editor at Random House, gave his friend Anatole Litvak the manuscript to Ward’s book. Litvak was enthralled. He began shopping it around Hollywood, trying to get anyone to bite on the difficult subject matter, with absolutely no luck. He finally came to Daryl F. Zanuck, 20th Century Fox studio head and a man who was known to gamble on socially relevant “message” pictures. Zanuck was wary and financially cautious as usual but he green-lit the project. American movie audiences after World War II had matured significantly and he felt that, when artfully done, “message” films were successful. Zanuck was prescient again.
Litvak wanted Ingrid Bergman (his favorite actress) for the lead but nothing came of it. Zanuck suggested Gene Tierney but her pregnancy made it impossible. Ironically, Tierney herself would soon battle mental illness for the rest of her life. Ginger Rogers’ simply refused it. It finally fell to Olivia de Havilland who was hot off her previous year’s Best Actress Oscar for To Each His Own. She immersed herself in the role of Virginia Stuart Cunningham, the film’s protagonist, whose “nervous breakdown” (actually a bit more severe than that) lands her in a mental asylum. De Havilland researched thoroughly, conversing with doctors, nurses, and patients, visiting actual institutions, reading case studies and observing sufferers and their mannerisms. Her performance is raw, bare-boned, and jarring- particularly for the time and from an actress known for her beauty and refinement.
For most of the picture, her hair is matted and greasy, her clothes disheveled and ill fitting. She is alternately reserved and impetuous, pitiable and foolish. Confused, angry, or frightened stares emit from her dark, baggy, sunken eyes.
Her facial and vocal shifts express perfectly the madness and delusion within her. She moves from fear and anxiety directly into anger and accusation. Her screaming fits are chilling. She expresses perfectly that maddening feeling of being aware you are behaving irrationally while your explanations serve only to further incriminate you.
She would have easily won another Oscar for this performance had she not won two years prior. Jane Wyman would take it for playing a differently afflicted (deaf mute) character in Johnny Belinda.
The absence of the 20th Century Fox fanfare over the opening logo hints at the seriousness of the “prestige” picture to follow. The film cleverly weaves the story as a mystery at first, slowly revealing the source of Virginia’s illness through flashbacks and voice-overs from herself and her husband (Mark Stevens). Her inner monologues (done in voice-over) reveal her current state. She constantly compares her sanity to those surrounding her. Her recurring childlike nature hides a festering guilt complex that reveals itself in a “calendar syndrome”, the association of a specific time in one’s life where the initial trauma occurred. She continually views her institutionalization as penal and she wonders what crime she has committed. When they strap her down for electroshock therapy, she actually believes she is going to be executed. As she opens her mouth to protest, the rubber mouth guard is inserted, silencing her.
The needed psychological overviews and Freudian promotion is skillfully handled through Virginia’s doctor (Leo Glenn) whose calm, assuring approach gives balance and hope to the proceedings and audience. If the Doctor’s explanations and summary seem a tad overwrought or simplified, remember that film audiences of the time did not possess a vast knowledge of Freudian psychology or a filmic sense of irony or subtlety (most don’t even now) and demanded a tight wrap up with no loose ends.
Litvak infuses a documentary feel to the sequences in the asylum lending the film its gritty realism and socially conscious punch. A strong supporting cast provides memorable moments throughout. Litvak made sure to hire seasoned character actors for even the smallest of parts (the film’s casting budget was 20% greater than other films of the time). These “extras” provide the moaning, babbling, chattering, screaming, persecuted, conspiratorial ranting, banging, singing, dancing and cackling backdrop, which represents Virginia’s own derangement and her inability to escape from the internal and external voices. Not surprisingly, the film took home the Oscar for sound. Visually, Litvak includes some inventive, nightmarish scenes of expressionism involving whirlpools and a metaphoric “snake pit” to show Virginia’s further descent into madness and her damning environment.
Toward the end of the film there is a strange, near incongruous scene where the inmates all gather for a dance in a large room of the hospital. What initially seems like a tacked on piece of schmaltz suddenly transforms into one of the most emotional sequences in film history. A female patient begins singing Going Home to Dvorak’s 9th Symphony in a beautiful, heartfelt voice. The other inmates gather and join in, the camera cuts to a high angle shot of the throng, then to their lost, hopeful individual faces as the ironic lyrics tell of a homecoming that will never happen for most of them. It is beyond tearful. It is tragedy.
The Snake Pit is one of those seminal films that made social change possible. It spawned many brilliant movies of like intent. Without it, there is no One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Bell Jar, Sybil, The Three Faces of Eve, Girl, Interrupted, Frances, Spider, Awakenings, Chattahoochee, Shock Corridor, A Beautiful Mind or Clean, Shaven.
It gave the industry the courage to portray mental illness as a debilitating disease and enlighten many to its causes, effects, and possible treatments. There is still a long way to go. Fear, mistrust, and callousness are pervasive, much to the fault of filmmakers overly dependent on sociopathic characters. Any similar stereotypes against other factions of society would be (and have been) met with outrage. “Crazy” has become easy pickings.
The situation will improve when we, as a society, can begin to see a muttering or ranting heap of humanity on a city sidewalk and realize that medical assistance is what they need, not a suggestion to “Get off your ass and find a job.”
Reader Comments (3)
Mr. Moores, this is a truly excellent review. Maybe on of your best (that I have read). Bravo!
I wonder...a dark movie, the review written just days after your birthday, was it a rough birthday? A major one? 40 perhaps? Or just intensely introspective? Or maybe I am just way wrong, eh my piscean friend?
Having recently gone through a bout of clinical depression (brought on, I maintain, by those saddening, all too ubiquitous depression commercials) and having dealt with the mind stealing, spirit nulling drugs and the also ubiquitous inabilityof friends, family and co-workers to understand and their continued advice to 'shrug it off' and, as your review says, 'get off your ass and find a job', I find this review true, relevant and important in a personal sense and a social one.
(run-on sentence or beautifully crafted?)
ps to Moores: there is pointed clue to my name is this review
OMG! Are you Bennett Cerf?!
Or do you have a daughter named after a Jane Austen novel?
Ha! You toy with me. I feel the game that was afoot is now tapping its toes.....coming to rest