Seems a Bit More Like Hell

Film: All This, and Heaven Too
Format: Turner Classic Movies on big ol’ television.

When I first started reviewing films seriously here (at least as seriously as I’ve reviewed any films on this site), I was non-committal about Bette Davis. I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. All This, and Heaven Too is my 15th Bette Davis movie, and by now, I’ve gotten it. Davis was a force of nature on the screen. Something of a beauty in her earlier films, Davis, by the time her career truly kicked into high gear, could not be called a classic Hollywood beauty by any real standard. No, Davis’s appeal was how forceful and dynamic she could be on the screen. All This, and Heaven Too falls in that strange middle place in her career, after her temptress roles (as in Jezebel) and before her less glamorous but meatier roles (like in Now, Voyager). What this means is that Davis is playing a romantic character while not having the traditional looks that might be expected.

Mlle. Henriette Deluzy-Desportes (Davis) has just come to America where she is employed at a girls’ school as a French teacher. Sadly for her, scandal has followed her, and the girls in her class are relentless and scandalized by her presence. Convinced to stick it out by young pastor Henry Martyn Field (Jeffrey Lynn), who she met on her crossing from Europe, she goes back to her classroom to tell the story of her life to her students in the hopes that they might better understand and perhaps accept her.

Disconnected

Film: Sorry, Wrong Number
Format: Movies! on rockin’ flatscreen.

I’ve never been shy about my deep and abiding love for the great Barbara Stanwyck, so when Sorry, Wrong Number appeared on Movies! I figured it was a good opportunity to get a little time with the delightful Babs. It also happened to be the only one of her four nominated performances that I hadn’t seen. This is a film long considered a classic and with pretty good reason. Best of all, it’s Stanwyck who carries about 80% of the film.

Leona Stevenson (Stanwyck) is a bed-ridden invalid with a heart condition. She’s also extremely wealthy thanks to her father (Ed Begley). On the night in question, she is distraught about her husband Henry (Burt Lancaster) being very late coming home from work. It happens to be the servants’ night off, which means that Leona is home alone. Trying to reach her husband on the phone, she is connected instead to a call where two men are talking, two men who can’t hear her. It soon becomes evident that the two men are discussing a murder that they are to commit that night at 11:15.

This Might Leave a Czar

Film: Anastasia
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

A while ago, I commented on just how good 1935 was for Charles Laughton; the man was in three movies nominated for Best Picture, one of which won. That’s a hell of a good year. Yul Brynner had a good year in 1956. He walked away with an Oscar for The King and I and acted across from Ingrid Bergman in her Oscar-winning performance in Anastasia. Okay, I’ll admit that I’m prone to like Yul Brynner in general. I’m not sure if it’s the bald head, the piercing stare, or the Mongolian-tinged accent, but I’ll watch him in just about anything.

Anastasia is epic in everything but length in the sense that this is massive, sweeping story about history and romance with any number of plot twists. And like many an epic, this is a story deeply involved in Russian history. It seems impossible to touch on any aspect of Russian history without the story becoming something massive, at least in tone and scope. Anastasia tells one of the great myths of Russian history post-revolution. It’s well known that the family of Tsar Nicholas II was killed by the Bolsheviks, but there was also the story that the tsar’s daughter Anastasia somehow survived the slaughter. What then would happen if Anastasia Nicolaevna had survived?

Decision before Dawn

Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

I think I’ve mentioned before that when I was a kid, war films were my favorite genre of film. I watched other films, but war films were what I loved the best. Decision before Dawn is one that I missed until recently. This is another film where I enjoyed it while I was watching, but when it comes to the end and it’s time to write about it, I don’t know what to say.

On the surface, this is a pretty standard World War II picture pitting the Allied forces against the remnants of Germany toward the end of the fighting in Europe. Allied troops marching across the continent are still encountering resistance, of course, and are naturally doing everything they can to capture enemy troops and end the war as quickly as possible. One of those things they are doing is recruiting captured German soldiers to operate as spies behind enemy lines. It’s obvious that Germany will lose at this point, so ending the war as quickly as possible has become a priority.

Nucking Futs

Films: Shock Corridor, The Snake Pit
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player (Shock); streaming video from NetFlix on laptop (Snake).

When it comes to filming the dirtier side of life, sex is what the people want to see. There are undoubtedly more films that showcase sex—not even getting into the pornographic side of the world—than anything else. Tune into Cinemax some night after about 10:30 and see how many bad cop movies/slasher movies/etc. take place in strip clubs, for instance. Of almost as much interest to the average person is insanity, and plenty of films explore this as well. Many of these are pretty bad, just like most sex films are pretty bad. But some of them are also pretty good, even beyond the shock appeal and the thrill of watching something that feels like should be going on behind closed doors.

Shock Corridor is such a film. Looking to expose a killer in the local mental institution, ace reporter Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) undergoes a year of training to pose as a mental patient. He has his girlfriend, singer and stripper Cathy (Constance Towers), claim that Johnny is her brother, and that he’s attempted to force an incestuous relationship with her. The doctors at the hospital agree to put him under observation, and get Johnny declared legally insane, committing him to the ward.

As Johnny undergoes treatment, he locates the three men who were the witness to the crime committed as well as other inmates like Pagliacci (Larry Tucker), a grossly overweight man who believes himself an opera singer. The first witness Johnny speaks to is Stuart (James Best). Stuart was captured by the communists in Korea and brainwashed, and now believes himself to be General J.E.B. Stuart, and replays Confederate battles in his head. In a moment of lucidity (something that happens with each witness), Stuart reveals that the killer wore white pants, and is thus either an attendant or a doctor.

Witness number two is Trent (Hari Rhodes), an African-American who was the only non-white at a prominent university. Eventually, the constant abuse broke him down, and he spends his days split between his old personality and one in which he is a racist and a founder of the KKK. From Trent, Johnny learns that the killer was not a doctor, but an attendant.

Third on the list is Dr. Boden (Gene Evans), a man who worked on the Manhattan Project, and has regressed to a childlike state, a regression that he admits to having done willingly during his moment of lucidity. He reveals the name of the real killer to Johnny, closing the case.

The problem is, and this is the reason to watch the film, of course, is that his time spent in the institution is starting to have a real effect on poor Johnny’s mind. Initially, he has terrible dreams about what might happen to the attractive Cathy while he is in stir. After all, he thinks, Cathy is attractive and talented, and works in a strip show—there’s no telling what one of the customers might get up to. Eventually, though, he starts to believe in the story he invented to get thrown into the ward in the first place.

There are plenty of lurid moments. At one point, while trying to get on Stuart’s good side, for instance, Johnny is trapped in the nymphomaniac ward, and nearly torn to shreds by women desperate for any man. While this might sound like the sort of scene Russ Meyer might film, it’s actually pretty terrifying. There’s nothing sexy about this scene, and quite a bit that is horrible, and Johnny comes out of the ordeal bandaged.

In his attempt to win over Trent, Johnny helps Trent go on a race-fueled explosion, which earns Johnny a trip to electroshock therapy—again lurid and again frightening and terrible. This episode creates a further indication of Johnny’s deteriorating mental state: frequently his ability to speak gives out and he’s unable to communicate.

There’s no doubt that Shock Corridor was made with the lurid in mind, and it seeks to shock the viewer at every turn. One of the most effective moments of this comes with a full-blown hallucination on the part of Johnny, featuring rain in the middle of the ward and some sudden color photography. Once this happens, it’s evident that like the other patients, Johnny is having moments of insanity and lucidity. The question is which will come out on top.

Despite the lurid nature of the topic and the story, this is a great film. It’s not an easy watch, but it’s a worthy one, and this is a film I will definitely revisit once I’ve completed the entire list.

An earlier film about the insane asylum is The Snake Pit. This is a far less lurid tale, perhaps because of its age, and perhaps because it attempts to paint a realistic picture of schizophrenia instead of the amped-up version presented in Shock Corridor. Certainly there are a number of Hollywood touches to this film, but this is a harrowing account of the illness of Virginia Cunningham (Olivia de Havilland) and the attempts to get to the root of her particular mental state.

We start in the hospital, called Juniper Hill (and if you’ve ever read Stephen King’s It, now you know where he got the name of his mental institution from), and Virginia’s awakening. She has no idea where she is or how she got there. We learn briefly in a flashback from her husband Robert (Mark Stevens) that the two of them met in Chicago, and that she ran out quickly one night when they had plans. He eventually found her again after he had moved to New York, and while she seemed both desperate and unable to believe that he truly loved her, they were married. Shortly thereafter, she broke with reality completely, and was institutionalized.

We learn what has happened to Virginia as her doctor, Mark Kik (short for Chrzanowski, and played by Leo Genn) learns of her troubled past. Virginia is convinced that it is impossible for a man to love her, or so we think at first. What we come to understand is not that she finds herself unlovable, but that she seems to be plagued with a curse—men who care about her don’t fare too well when Virginia isn’t happy with them or wants a break from them. A few terrible coincidences lead to schizophrenia, and to shock treatments and hydrotherapy.

What’s interesting here is that this film caused a huge reaction in the country at large—mental institutions were revamped because of this film. This is despite the fact that this film is in no way an expose of institutions. If anything, the wrath of the reformers must have centered on such places because of the character of Miss Davis (Helen Craig), who appears to be a sort of template for Nurse Ratched, although with far less malice and power.

While The Snake Pit succumbs to the Hollywood ending, this in no way diminishes its power, or the incredible force of de Havilland’s portrayal. She gives here one of the great acting performances ever recorded, and I’ll say it here—the woman was robbed at the Oscars.

The Snake Pit is too clinical at times, and fast forwards past many aspects of treatment. However, few things resonate so completely as Virginia’s first moments in what she calls the snake pit—it’s a moment of despair and realization brilliantly filmed, and one that still resonates as powerfully now as 60 years ago.

Why to watch Shock Corridor: It doesn’t spare the lurid details.
Why not to watch: It’s hard on the psyche.

Why to watch The Snake Pit: One of the greatest acting jobs ever committed to film.
Why not to watch: Olivia de Havilland far less glamorous than you’re used to.