I’ve
never heard The Snake Pit described as a film noir, but I’m going to
call it noir anyway. Many films noir address social justice issues, and on that
basis alone, The Snake Pit qualifies. And if one agrees that most films
noir address existential issues of angst and loneliness, The Snake Pit
qualifies on that point, too. I’ve never been a huge fan of categories, and
this is another chance to break the not-so-hard-and-fast rules.
The
film is based on a novel by Mary Jane Ward, who in turn based it on her own
experiences in a state mental health hospital. The field of mental health was
dismal, to put it mildly, in the 1940s, when The Snake Pit was released.
From the film’s depiction alone, it’s a wonder that Ward survived her mental
health issues and her stay in the hospital. I haven’t read the novel, but the
DVD commentary by film historian Aubrey Solomon describes it as more detailed, more
intense, and more discouraging than the film, and I found the film to be tough
to watch.
In the spring of 2021, Library of America reissued Mary Jane Ward’s
novel for the seventy-fifth anniversary of its original release. Click here to
see an article and interview with Larry Lockridge, a relative of Ward’s, who
wrote the afterword for the new edition. In the interview, he discusses the
novel and the film, among other topics.
The film starts with a shot of birds chirping in a
tree, and the camera pans down to a woman, Virginia, sitting on a park bench.
She talks in turn to two men, who are revealed to be imaginary, and to another
woman, Grace, who is sitting on the bench not far from her. Virginia doesn’t
know where she is and believes everyone around her are strangers. Someone calls
out and asks everyone to line up, and Grace takes Virginia by the hand and
pulls her into line with several other women. Virginia thinks that they are
visiting a zoo when she sees some women behind what look like prison bars. Then
she is afraid that they are trapped in a prison. She isn’t sure if she is
married, and she doesn’t recognize her husband, Robert, when he comes to visit.
(This article about The Snake Pit contains some
spoilers.)
The opening of the film apparently shows Virginia as a
recent arrival to the mental health hospital. Her husband Robert is there on
this same day, and he is dismayed when Virginia doesn’t recognize him. Robert
is at the hospital to discuss Virginia’s case history with one of her doctors,
Dr. Kik (no
one can pronounce Dr. Kensdelaerik’s last name, so everyone calls him Dr. Kik).
The doctor pulls out a file with Juniper Hill State
Hospital on it, and this is the point when viewers are finally sure of the setting.
Until this point, viewers were seeing events more or less from Virginia’s
perspective. Dr.
Kik wants to go over Virginia’s case history with her husband because there’s
so little in it. But her husband doesn’t know a lot about his wife’s personal
history. He says that she never talked much about her family when he first met
her and still doesn’t. Robert tells Dr. Kik about what he does know, and he
starts with meeting Virginia at one of his first jobs after being discharged
from the service in World War II, which is told in flashback.
On
a subsequent visit to the hospital, Robert signs the consent forms for
electroshock treatment. Virginia eventually has four of them. She also
undergoes narcosynthesis treatment, during which she reveals more about her
past and her fears to Dr. Kik. She had a boyfriend named Gordon who died in a
car accident; Virginia survived the accident, and she blames herself for
Gordon’s death. She also blames herself for her father’s death during her early
childhood on May 12, and her mental health deteriorates badly on and around
that date every year since.
Some
of the treatment methods depicted in the film are disturbing to watch, so much
so that I’m not sure I want to read the novel. The electroshock treatments were
particularly difficult, but I also found the cold-water bath treatments odd and
punitive: Patients are buttoned and restrained in the bath from the neck down,
whether they like cold water or not. There is also a period when Virginia is
straitjacketed, another restraint method that seems punitive, arbitrary, and
even dangerous. The patients have little privacy and wander about at the mercy
of the other patients and even the nurses and other staff members. In fact, the
nurses treat the patients terribly. One nurse, for example, wouldn’t allow the
female patients to walk on a large area rug in their ward simply because it was
new.
The
male doctors are portrayed as paternalistic. Most of them feel that they know
what is best in all circumstances and don’t give much credence to patients’
feelings. Dr. Kik is an exception because he seems to care about Virginia’s
welfare and treats her kindly. He consults with Virginia’s husband Robert, but
Robert never enters the wards where the patients are housed. He doesn’t really
know anything except what he can glean from seeing Virginia in communal
visiting spaces and during doctor consultations. It’s not stated directly in
the film, but I got the impression that once Robert brought Virginia to the
hospital and signed any consent forms, he had little say in what happened to
his wife. And any time Virginia spoke up, she was considered an unreliable
source because of her mental health.
The DVD commentary by film
historian Aubrey Solomon gives a lot of details about the making of the film
and about the background of the original novel and its author. Here’s a list,
which is extensive but certainly not exhaustive! The DVD commentary is well
worth a listen.
◊ The opening scene with
Virginia and Grace shows that this was not a typical Olivia de Havilland film. Olivia
Haviland, in the role of Virginia, is shown with torn stockings and a hole in
her sweater, and she is disheveled and not wearing any makeup.
◊ Olivia de Havilland did a lot of research
for her role. She visited state hospitals and talked to doctors and patients.
◊ Reviews at the time were glowing. The
film handled a serious subject well as entertainment that worked.
◊ The calendar syndrome applies to
Virginia, whose symptoms get worse on May 12 each year. The calendar syndrome
describes the effects of a traumatic event that recur on the same date each
year.
◊ The novel was like a diary, with
descriptions of daily life from the point of view of one character. To make a
screenplay for a film, characters had to be fleshed out and scenes added to
make a story. Studio head Darryl Zanuck was good at this, both in writing and
in film editing.
◊ Twenty-six states changed their laws
concerning the treatment of the mentally ill as a result of the treatment
depicted in The Snake Pit. (Wikipedia also has
some information about the impact that The Snake Pit had on legislation
and social policy. Click here for more information.)
◊ At one point in the film, Virginia
locks herself in a bathroom to hide from the head nurse, Nurse Davis. The
bathroom is clean, but that wasn’t the case in the novel. The bathrooms were
dirty, there was no privacy, and the patients showered only twice a week. This
information was part of the case against state institutions.
◊ Until The Snake Pit came out,
the public didn’t know what went on at state mental health institutions because
they were off limits to visitors. Family members and relatives who came to
visit were only allowed in certain spaces that were kept clean and well maintained.
◊ Dr. Kik’s explanation of how Virginia
got sick, starting probably in babyhood, is Freudian. (Freud
and psychotherapy were popular themes in film noir.)
Solomon
doesn’t call The Snake Pit a film noir, but I still do. It’s a great
film, whatever you choose to call it, but it’s not a film that one recommends
without some caveats. It is disturbing, even for a 1948 release, even in black
and white.
November 13, 1948, release date •
Directed by Anatole Litvak • Screenplay by Frank Partos, Millen Brand,
Arthur Laurents • Based on the novel The Snake Pit by
Mary Jane Ward • Music by Alfred Newman •
Edited by Dorothy Spencer • Cinematography by Leo Tover
Olivia
de Havilland as Virginia Stuart Cunningham
• Mark Stevens as Robert
Cunningham • Leo Genn as Dr. Mark H. Van Kensdelaerik (aka
Dr. Kik) • Celeste Holm as Grace •
Glenn Langan as Dr. Terry • Helen Craig as Nurse Davis • Leif
Erickson as Gordon • Beula Bondi as Mrs. Greer • Lee
Patrick as an asylum inmate • Howard Freeman as Dr. Curtis •
Natalie Schafer as Mrs. Stuart
• Damian O’Flynn as Mr.
Stuart •
Ruth Donnelly as Ruth • Katherine Locke as Margaret •
Celia Lovsky as Gertrude • Frank Conroy as Dr. Jonathan Gifford •
Minna Gombell as Ms. Hart • Betsy Blair as Hester •
Jacqueline deWit as Celia Sommerville
• Lora Lee Michel as Virginia at
age six • Jan Clayton as the inmate singing at the
dance
Distributed by Twentieth
Century Fox • Produced by Twentieth Century Fox
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