The Snake Pit

chanandre

[Cinémathèque PT #: 35 mm] (2010) Olivia de Havilland is such an underrated actress. She is awesome on this one.

josé neves

35mm. In the session's presentation, Olaf Möller stated that Litvak is a forgotten genius and this film can only give him reason. Despite the anachronistic psychiatric discursiveness - which generates amazing flashbacks - this is, unexpectedly, more than with Fuller, the film that best preceded Schroeter's brilliant operatic madness in "Tag der Idioten" - see the amazing cranes that fly over these visions of excess.

Daniel S.

The film never asks why there are so many neurotic people in the American society of the 40's, a theme that could have been very interesting to handle. And, above all, why doesn't anybody take an interest in Betsy Blair ? The girls seems to have a BIG problem and would have deserved a movie dedicated to her own case. Highly recommended.

Christopher R. Smith

One of the best of the Freudian psycho-dramas of the 1940s, centered around Olivia de Havilland's excellent tortured performance. Melodramatic at times, but it makes a solid effort towards stark realism, rather than the usual Hollywood glamor.

David M.K.

JOB OPENING: Nurse at State Booby Hatch. Ideal candidate will be rude, angry, and unattractive. Remorseless sadism preferred but not required. Should be proficient at wordlessly transmitting resentment and irritation to patients. Shorthand a plus.

Howard Fritzson

Notice how many character actresses from the Thirties are inmates in the asylum--Lee Patrick, Ruth Donnelly, Beulah Bondi, Minna Gombell, Ann Doran, Queenie Smith, Isabel Jewell, etc. They all talk so fast they practically sing. It is an opera consisting of their different styles or mannerisms pushed to the extreme. This alone makes it an entertaining, if dubious, study of insanity.

Weena Eloi

One of the best films ever made about mental illness and that's a pretty impressively hefty list. Olivia deHavilland has rarely been better. I was appalled by the barbaric practices of the mental hospital where deHavilland's character resides but that may have been the point: sweeping changes in the conditions of mental institutions across the U.S. were made shortly after the film's release. A stunner.

Valsardieu

Olivia de Havilland y est extraordinaire. Personne n'a jamais interprété la folie comme elle, avec une tristesse implacable dans le regard. Ce film reste avec vous longtemps.