Category: Films about grief

The End of the Affair (1999)

Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes in a doomed romance in The End of the Affair

Director: Neil Jordan

Cast: Ralph Fiennes (Maurice Bendrix), Julianne Moore (Sarah Miles), Stephen Rea (Henry Miles), Ian Hart (Mr Parkis), Jason Isaacs (Father Richard Smythe), James Bolam (Mr Savage), Sam Bould (Lance Parks), Deborah Findlay (Miss Smythe)

The End of the Affair is one of Graham Greene’s most autobiographical novels, based strongly on his relationship with Catherine Walston, wife of a friend in the civil service. Unlike the affair in the book, Greene’s continued for decades, long after the publication of the novel in 1951 (which had led to the husband demanding an end to it – a demand ignored). Greene’s novel recounts the dangerous passions of an affair, mixed with the powerful anxieties and uncertainties that the Catholic faith can have on relationships. Jordan’s film captures much of this – but in places fails to fully understand the spirit of Greene’s compelling novel.

Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes) is a moderately successful popular author, excused war service due to having injured his leg in the Spanish Civil War. In 1946, a chance meeting with Henry Miles (Stephen Rea), a staid civil servant brings back vivid memories of Maurice’s wartime affair with Henry’s wife Sarah (Julianne Moore). The affair ended abruptly for reasons Maurice cannot understand, and his love is twisting into jealous resentment. With Henry now concerned Sarah is having an affair – and seemingly unaware of Maurice and Sarah’s wartime relationship – Maurice takes it upon himself to hire Parkis (Ian Hart) a private investigator to find out more. The results though give him profound and affecting insights into both the present and the reasons for the end of his own affair with Sarah.

Jordan’s adaptation gets so much right, it’s almost more of a shame that it gets things wrong as well. The atmosphere of the film is simply perfect. It looks and feels exactly like a classic slice of Greeneland, with its dreary London, rain-soaked settings and gloomy period setting. Roger Pratt’s Oscar nominated photography is perfect for the tragic beauty of Greene’s work, and its matched with a sublime musical score from Michael Nyman that wrings every inch of emotion from the story.

Ralph Fiennes is also the perfect idea of a Greene hero – slightly imperious, bitter, arrogant with an air of prep school smugness mixed with an underlying sense of grim inferiority. It’s hard to imagine any other actor – maybe except Colin Firth – better suited to the slight air of dissolute, not obviously sympathetic world-weary struggle that a Greenian hero needs to exhibit. Fiennes barely puts a foot wrong and could have practically walked off the page.

Equally good is Julianne Moore, who nails a very English type of person, a woman determined to do her best and to set standards, but who carries just below the surface a deep well of emotional pain and sorrow that briefly is allowed to peek through. It’s a heart-rending performance of a person desperate for happiness, but hiding that longing under a veneer of acceptability, who sacrifices what she wants from life to meet the obligations of her faith. 

Because, it being Graham Greene, Faith is the big issue here – the idea of the private deals we make with God and the cost that those impose on us, the sacrifices of our own happiness in surface of something higher than ourselves. Greene’s novel intrinsically understand the eternal struggle felt in Catholicism to do the right thing, to accept the love of God into your life even if it means turning your back on more earthly loves and passions. How these journeys can be hard – unbearable even – but carry a level of reward in themselves. 

It’s that feeling for God – who Bendrix grows to believe has cheated him from happiness on earth – that powers his “diary of hate” that he is writing as the book opens. It’s an idea the film only fitfully engages with. Jordan deviates from the novel’s real intention at a key point, in particular “correcting” a dramatic error he feels Greene makes by having Sarah die “off camera” in the book, of a sudden cold, after confessing to Bendrix her reasons for ending the affair, her pact with God.

This narrative change allows a sequence in Brighton as the two reignite their affair – but it also undermines the tragedy of the book, that suddenness of loss, and also makes Sarah’s death feel like a tit-for-tat punishment for going back on her word. More to the point, the affair restarting has the air of an atheistic view of the Catholic complications here, an idea that these can be easily brushed aside because the “heart wants”. It’s to miss the point of Greene’s world thinking and undermine the small everyday tragedy in favour of something more conventional and “epic”.

It’s a major tweak that undermines the strength (otherwise) of Jordan’s work here – his directing and scripting is otherwise largely faultless. Other changes to the source clarify the message – I think changing Smythe (a gently but arrogantly certain Jason Isaacs) into a priest rather than an atheist Sarah is using to test her faith makes sense, even if it does suggest that she acts under the influence of someone else rather than on her own opinions. Making Bendrix a Spanish war veteran rather someone suffering the effects of a childhood illness adds a political and moral romanticism to the character entirely absent from any of the rest of his personality. But it’s fine.

Jordan’s film has many strengths. Its tone is excellent and it’s passion inspiring (the tender explicitness of the sex scenes landed it with a bizarre and controversial 18 certificate) and there are superb performances, not just the leads but Stephen Rea excellent as the meek but noble husband and some lovely comic work from Ian Hart as a haplessly efficient private eye. But the film slightly misses, in the end, the point of the novel – which is a real shame. If Jordan had stuck to the book, and its complex themes of guilt and grief and Catholicism we could have really had something here.

Mr Holmes (2015)

Ian McKellen is an ageing Sherlock trying to understand his past in Mr Holmes

Director: Bill Condon

Cast: Ian McKellen (Sherlock Holmes), Laura Linney (Mrs Munro), Milo Parker (Roger Munro), Hiroyuki Sanada (Taiki Umezaki), Hattie Morahan (Ann Kelmot), Patrick Kennedy (Thomas Kelmot), Roger Allam (Dr Barrie), Phil Davis (Inspector Gilbert), Frances de la Tour (Madame Schirmer)

It’s 1946 and over 35 years since Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) last investigated a case. Living in retirement with his bees in Devon, with his housekeeper Mrs Munro (Laura Linney) and her inquisitive son Roger (Milo Parker), 93-year-old Holmes’ final “case” is to try and combat the deterioration of his own mental faculties. This focuses on his attempts to remember the details of his final case, investigating the wife (Hattie Morahan) of a client, a case where he knows something went terribly wrong, but cannot recall the exact details.

Condon’s film is a quiet, gentle piece which primarily becomes a character study of the Great Detective, trying to locate the man inside the thinking machine. This is a Holmes unlike any other, haunted by past mistakes and scared of losing the intellectual abilities that have been his principal purpose. Condon’s film also makes clear that much of what we know about Holmes was a cheeky “embellishment” by Watson in his stories – from the pipe and deerstalker to the address of 221B. This is a Holmes who failed all his life to form personal connections, and found this problem magnified by becoming a real-life fictional character, a person who knows no-one but is known by everyone.

This fascinating re-evaluation of Holmes is helped by Ian McKellen’s superb performance (in his second collaboration with Condon after Gods and Monsters). McKellen’s ability to convey the intellectual sharpness of Holmes is matched by his vulnerability and fragility as he feels those same powers begin to fail. This is a Holmes who can still sharply deduce where someone has been from a quick analysis, but needs to write Roger’s name on his cuff to help him remember whom he is talking to. McKellen’s performance slowly reveals the longing for emotional connection and his own regrets at the isolation that has dominated his own life.

The expressiveness of Ian McKellen’s eyes comes into play here, both their capacity for joy – and this is a Holmes who takes an intense pleasure in his own acuity – and the way McKellen is able to allow these eyes to glaze over with forgetfulness and flashes of senility. He also forms a wonderful bond with Milo Parker (very good, genuine and real) as Roger, the two of them forming an odd couple relationship that also gives Holmes a beginning of an understanding of what he has missed from a life without family and friends. 

Alongside this fascinating character study, the actual storyline is fairly tame – but then that’s hardly the point. The modern day plotline takes in physical and mental decline, isolation, fracturing family bonds and post-war Japan (where Holmes travels in search of “Prickly ash” a plant he hopes will help to counteract his mental decline). But it’s really a quiet framework to change this Holmes into a man who sees the world only in terms of logic and puzzles, and must learn to see the humanity and emotions that underlie people’s actions. It’s a Holmes who must learn to appreciate feelings, to express them and to tell “white lies” to save people from pain.

It’s no surprise that the past sequences – where a spry McKellen also plays Holmes in his late 50s – also revolve around this. The investigation cheekily features spiritualism (the pseudo-science that obsessed Conan Doyle in his later days) but the real point is Holmes failing to understand the pain and loss that underlie the desire to believe in the possibility of life after death – that loss is a traumatic event that cannot be hand-waved away with a presentation of facts, but a has a real lasting impact on people. Hattie Morahan captures this wonderfully, in a quietly emotional performance as a grieving mother.

The final resolution of this I found slightly less satisfying – perhaps because I thought of actual “canon” stories that showed Holmes expressing far more emotional intelligence than this film gives him the credit for understanding here (e.g. The Yellow Face). I’m also not sure if this failure would really have left any Holmes punishing himself with 35 years of isolation with bees. But it fits with the film’s concept of a Holmes who finds himself pained by loneliness.

This loneliness is hammered home throughout. Mycroft, Hudson and Watson are long dead. Watson himself is implied to be a man who never understood Holmes, that the “fictionalised” Holmes became more real to him than the flesh-and-blood man. That on Watson’s part the friendship became about the stories, with Holmes always triumphant, rather than reflecting who he was. Holmes finds this disconnection between his inner self and the world’s perception hammered home at every turn – at one point the film shows him watching a Rathbone-esque film (where he is played by Nicholas Rowe, the actor from Young Sherlock Holmes), where the case that haunts him plays out with a traditional ease. Completing this disconnection, Watson remains unseen in the film: a stranger whom Holmes was tied to forever.

All this makes for a thought-provoking film, with a delightful performance from McKellen making a truly unique and original screen Holmes. There are a host of fabulous supporting performances – Laura Linney does fine work as his insecure, lonely housekeeper who feels she is losing her son to the detective – and the film is a gloriously entertaining Sunday afternoon treat, which will make you think again about a man whom the whole world knows, but who may not know himself.

Orphée (1950)

Jean Marais is in love with Death in Cocteau’s poetic Orphée

Director:  Jean Cocteau

Cast: Jean Marais (Orphée), François Périer (Heurtebise), María Casares (The Princess), Marie Déa (Eurydice), Henri Crémieux (L’éditeur), Juliette Gréco (Aglaonice), Roger Blin (The Poet), Édouard Dermit (Cégeste), René Worms (Judge)

Cocteau is perhaps the only major poet who became a filmmaker. His films introduced, naturally, a poetic beauty into the French New Wave – something that has led many to overlook their embracing of the techniques of modern cinema. Orphée is his most successful work, a beautiful re-imagining of the Orpheus myth, set in a smashed up post-war France, with the afterlife a bombed-out industrial wasteland. It’s a beautifully made, inventive and hugely impressive film, not without flaws, that allows you to see the potential magic and inventive sleight-of-hand in cinema. It’s a treat.

Orphée (Jean Marais, Cocteau’s real life-partner) is a poet who attracts the attention of a mysterious Princess (María Casares) during a poets’ café brawl that leaves her current protegee Cégeste (Édouard Dermit) wounded after he is hit by speeding motorcycle riders.  He helps her “transport him to the hospital” only to find that Cégeste is dead and that the Princess is some sort of manifestation of Death, transporting artists to the afterlife. The mysterious motorcycle riders are her assistants, while her driver Heurtebise (François Périer) also has some sort of role in carrying souls to the afterlife. Orphée wakes the next morning obsessed with Princess and the cryptic messages he heard on her car radio, that echo the seemingly meaningless messages of the Free France radio. His obsession distracts him from his wife Eurydice (Marie Déa), but when the Princess’ assistants claim her life, Orphée with the help of Heurtebise (who has fallen in love with Eurydice) feels compelled to journey to the afterlife to rescue her.

Cocteau’s film captures the poetic beauty of a dream, many of the events happening with a strange logic in a world that feels a few degrees askew from ours. It’s a film in love with the personal interpretation of great poetry, presenting a series of events we are invited to form our own impressions of. Cocteau’s film also suggests the ever-present link between the dead and the living – the dead still yearn, in their way, for life (some wander the afterlife unaware that they are even dead) while the poet Orphée falls in love with the mystical immortality of death, the all-encompassing love-affair our soul can have with the afterlife. The Princess is herself drawn towards poets, whose grace and beauty she can help promote to their own immortality.

To present this strange and unsettling world, Cocteau uses a host of inventive cinematic tricks that constantly surprise and delight. The Princess’ helpers feel like they invented the cosplay aesthetic with their burly short-sleeve shirts, helmets, dark glasses and machine guns. The afterlife is a blasted, burnt-out factory with ruined homes and houses around it and vital meetings and trials taking apart in worn-out rooms with cracked and decaying walls. The characters move through this afterlife depending on their status – Orphée crawls through it like treacle, battling against his own brain struggling to understand where he is, while Heurtebise glides through it seemingly without moving his feet. 

The afterlife is accessed by moving through mirrors. Cocteau uses reflections intriguingly throughout the film – after all mirrors show us only a version of our world, not the real thing. Mirrors are moved through either as if they are not there, or melt into liquid that souls can pass through. Cocteau uses film in reverse to show mirrors smashing and then reforming themselves, a brilliant effect that looks disconcertingly wrong. He uses the same technique to show dead souls rising under the Princess’ influence, standing with a bizarre disjointedness (the actors were filmed falling and the film reversed). The rubber gloves that must be used to move through mirrors are also shown being put on using reverse photography – the actors were filmed taking them off and the film is reversed making the gloves seem like they fly onto the hands. It’s a simple effect but brilliantly done.

Cocteau continues this inventiveness in the afterlife. Some sets are built on an angle, meaning Orphée at one point crawls along one wall before sliding impossibly down the next wall. Back projection is brilliantly used to show Heurtebise manipulating the afterlife around him. It’s a feast of inventive and imaginative angles, ideas and concepts brilliantly shot. And mirrors are always the key, the doorway to death and a world like ours but not.

And behind that door, Cocteau presents a fascinating afterlife. Is the Princess Death? Or just one of many functionaries? Heurtebise too seems to have some sort of role as Death – and the functionaries of the afterlife operate under a series of rules that suggest they barely understand the world of the living any more. Orphée is allowed to take Eurydice home – on condition he never looks at her, a condition nearly impossible to meet in the real world, despite Heurtebise’s best efforts. Meanwhile Orphée is fixated on Death, chasing the Princess through cloisters and a marketplace in the real world, drawn towards the ghostly messages on the radio (their echoing of French Resistance messages indicating their link to a deathly past of destruction). 

The film throws in a love triangle with Death as the third wheel. Orphée is moved by the desire for the immortality death can bring, while the Princess herself perhaps causes Eurydice’s death out of envy and bends the rules anyway she can to bring herself closer to Orphée. Orphée’s quest for inspiration and immortality distract him from the everyday love of his wife – and her pregnancy. Only Heurtebise still seems to yearn for the quiet normality of everyday life.

The film’s main flaw is that it often fails to invest the relationship of Orphée and Eurydice with any real emotional depth. Part of this is the fault of Jean Marais, who delivers a performance that is aiming for brooding but instead generally comes across as sour and sulky, making him hard to warm to or invest in, while Marie Déa is given very little to do. The real interest is in the figures from the afterlife, and María Casares is superb as a cold, almost dominatrix like Death who slowly finds in herself great longing (perhaps in part for her previous life on earth). François Périer is similarly superb as Heurtebise, desperate to feel again as he did when alive.

Despite the film’s lack of real heart and warmth among (of all things!) it’s living characters, there is so much depth, inventiveness and bizarre longing in the afterlife that you can more than forget this. Cocteau’s film is a wonderful dream, an immersive, brilliantly created feast for the imagination that marries art and cinematic techniques in a way few others have managed before or since.

Rio Grande (1950)

John Wayne is the Colonel regretting past mistakes in Rio Grande

Director: John Ford

Cast: John Wayne (Lt Colonel Kirby Yorke), Maureen O’Hara (Kathleen Yorke), Victor McLaglen (Sergeant Major Quincannon), Ben Johnson (Trooper Travis Tyree), Claude Jarmon Jnr (Trooper Jefferson Yorke), Harry Carey Jnr (Trooper “Sandy” Boone), Chill Wills (Dr Wilkins), J. Carrol Naish (General Philip Sheridan)

John Ford’s next project was meant to be The Quiet Man, his Ireland-set passion project. However the studio, Republic Pictures, were not convinced the expensive picture could ever be a hit (it later became one of their biggest hits and only Best Picture nominee). So they told Ford he could make it on condition that he, and his proposed stars Wayne and O’Hara, first made a good old-fashioned Western. Because they sure as hell knew they could sell that. So Ford turned out the third and final picture in his “Cavalry” trilogy, three interconnected films (the others being Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon) with loosely connected themes and overlapping character names.

Lt Colonel Kirby Yorke (John Wayne) is posted on the Texan frontier, defending the settlers against Apache attacks. When Yorke’s son Jefferson (Claude Jarmon Jnr) – who Yorke wasn’t seen in almost eighteen years – washes out of West Point, he volunteers to join Yorke’s regiment as an ordinary Trooper.  This leads to the arrival of his mother – and Yorke’s estranged wife – Kathleen (Maureen O’Hara arriving at the Fort, eager to get her son out of an enlisted life she feels isn’t right for him. But Yorke is determined there will be no special treatment for his son, never mind how dangerous are starting to get with the Apaches. 

Rio Grande is a professionally assembled, classic Ford western that hits all the marks you could expect in terms of action, excitement and that romantic version of the West that you might expect from Ford. But it’s perhaps so professionally assembled it still feels like one for the money at times – it’s a collection of all you might expect from a Ford classic, so much so it doesn’t feel like it offers much new among the director’s other works.

It’s most interesting parts revolve around John Wayne’s complex performance as a man who has buried his emotions beneath a cover of professionalism. Yorke is now martinet, but he’s a man who has put duty above his personal relations. It’s easy to forget that in many of his iconic roles Wayne was often the veteran, and here is man nearing retirement, loaded down with regrets and secretly crying out for a chance at reconciliation. Wayne’s performance is heartfelt and tinged with sadness, the sort of man who looks at his son from a distance as he performs dangerous horse riding stunts, but then backs away into the shadows, anxious that his fatherly concern remains unseen. It’s a quiet, lonely and sad performance from Wayne, a reminder of what a soulful actor he could be.

It also helps that he has wonderful chemistry with Maureen O’Hara, equally wonderful as his wife. A caring and loving woman, O’Hara’s Kathleen is also determined and independent, sure of her own mind and with no compunction about standing her ground against her husband. The two of them make a wonderful pair, two people who fear they have turned their backs on happiness for duty but secretly desperate for reconciliation. That desire certainly drips from Wayne, whose sad eyes beneath his drooping moustache seem to be constantly searching for grasping something from his life – and Ford certainly knew how to shoot this American icon with angles that made him appear like a mournful monument.

The actual plot of the film outside of this isn’t really that strong. Any shade or depth is removed from the Apaches who are faceless, ruthless killers who move like a swarm and spend the nights dancing and drinking after a victory. Even at the time there were feelings that the film was uncomfortably slanted in its view of the Native Americans. The actual story of the battle against the Apache meanders across the screen, with discussions of crossing the Rio Grande to do battle with them largely forgotten in a final act kidnap plotline that serves as the film’s action set piece.

Honestly, most of the plot outside of whether Wayne, O’Hara and son (played with an earnest honesty by Claude Jarmon Jnr) pretty much is by the numbers stuff. There are a host of songs and musical interjections from contemporary Western group Sons of the Pioneers. Ford made a virtue of the studio’s decision to include the band – apparently they loved being in the film and led a number of impromptu sing-alongs during the late night cast sessions, which basically led to Ford putting more of them in the film. The songs do add a wistful, whimsical air to the film which actually works rather well and mirrors nicely the personal drama of a family unit which duty is keeping apart.

The action when it kicks in is enjoyable, even if Ford relies a little too heavily on over cranked cameras to adjust the speed of various falls and horse riding stunts – the sped up effect actually often makes the whole thing look a little too reminiscent at times of keystone kops silent film. The best stunt sequence is done instead in real time, as Johnson, Carey Jnr and Jarmon Jnr take it in turns to “Roman Ride” two horses at a time around a course. Johnson and Carey – skilled horsemen – spent weeks training, the effect was so good that Ford suggested Jarmon have a go.

The cast is rounded out by some solid work from Ford regulars. McLaglen is good value as a decent Sergeant, one of those comic Irish types that Ford had such fondness for. Johnson is very good as a trooper on the run from the law who can’t resist coming back to the do the right thing. But the film belongs to Wayne and O’Hara, a couple looking to seize a last chance at happiness. Rio Grande may be one for the money, but it’s still got a touch of that Ford magic.

The Seventh Seal (1957)

Death plays chess in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Cast: Max von Sydow (Antonius Block), Bengt Ekerot (Death), Gunnar Björnstrand (Jöns), Bibi Andersson (Mia), Nils Poppe (Jof), Erik Strandmark (Jonas Skat), Åke Fridell (Plog), Inga Gill (Lisa), Bertil Anderberg (Raval), Gunnel Lindblom (Mute girl), Inga Landgré (Karin)

Is there a more famous arthouse film than The Seventh Seal? Winning the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, the film turned Ingmar Bergman into the doyen of the Arthouse across the world and many of its actors into major figures of world cinema. The film so captured the imagination it became one of those films that falls slightly in and out of fashion, largely because it’s almost impossible to come to it fresh. Its style, images and concepts have been so echoed, parodied and teased ever since that it’s become a corner stone. But it should stay in fashion, because it’s a well-made and intriguing film.

In the fourteenth century, a knight, Antonius Block (Max von Sydow), washes up on the shores of Denmark with his squire Jöns (Gunnar Björnstrand). Death (Bengt Ekerot) comes for them, but Block challenges him to a game of chess. If Block wins, Death will leave him be if Death wins Block will go with him. Death accepts, and Block seizes the time this will give him to try and understand more about faith, destiny and man’s place in God’s plans. As the game stops and starts, Block and Jöns travel to Block’s estate, encountering and befriending along the way Jof (Nils Poppe) and Mia (Bibi Andersson) a pair of travelling actors, just trying to make their way in the world.

Bergman’s film is shot in a luscious but very simple black-and-white and juggles profound issues about mankind and faith with an imagination-capturing central concept of man playing chess with death. Bergman based the film on a woodcut from the famous Swedish artist Albertus Pictor (who appears in the film, decorating a church with images of death and plague – themes that run throughout the film) and used it as a jumping off point for a meditations on the inevitable end.

It makes sense then to set the film in the medieval era, where death indeed may well feel like a constant companion. Bergman’s medieval world is a smorgasbord of medieval tropes – some have criticised the historical accuracy of Crusades, plague, flagellants, Pictur, witch trials etc. all happening at the same time, which seems bizarre criticism for a film that features a white faced Death prowling the countryside with a chess board. It works very well though for creating a sense of a parable around the whole film.

Death is a continual in the film. A crowd of flagellants marches through a village at one point, a monk stopping only to harangue the crowd on the fury of God, before a mist descends and seems to pick off most of the crowd, several flagellants disappearing as they walk, leaving a mostly empty field. It’s a visual picture of death, Plague carries off one and all, an active representation of mortality. It leaves a world in which man either contemplates, gets angry or decides to just live day-to-day – reactions that we see in all the film’s characters.

Of course, Block takes the contemplative route, vainly asking what it is all about – what is God’s plan and what meaning does life have? Perfectly using von Sydow’s imperious chill, Bergman makes Block an intellectual straining for understanding, an aesthete who wants to believe his time on earth has all been part of some plan and that he himself has done (or will do) something that matters. Von Sydow is particularly fine in the role, not least in his agonising confessional scene where he slowly but with an increasing world-weariness unburdens his soul to a priest he cannot see – but who we see is of course Death himself.

But that’s just another low blow from Death, a fascinating figure. Played with a benign politeness by Bengt Ekerot, Bergman presents a Death who is cunning, intrudes on world events and doesn’t play fair. He cons Block into telling him a winning chess stratagem, cuts down a tree to claim the soul of the man hiding it and reveals himself to be the leader of a group intent on burning witches. He may be polite but he’s ruthless. No wonder he inspires such fear, and Ekerot may smile but it’s the smile of a man who knows he will win no matter what and everyone will come with him eventually. 

So what is the secret to what life is all about? In Bergman’s medieval world, God seems silent. We see two religious figures: one the haranguing Monk, the other the fallen Priest Ravel – a thief, a liar and a bully. The priest in the Church they visit turns out to be Death. The countryside is vast, unfriendly and bleak. Block’s quest to understand something of what man’s role in creation is seemingly doomed. Perhaps his squire – an excellent Gunnar Björnstrand – already understands what Block needs to learn: there is no grand secret, we must simply enjoy the moments we have been given. His squire is a simple, decent (for his time), unpretentious man with some sense of justice. And maybe that’s the trick.

It certainly seems to be the case with Jof and Mia, the more homespun actors who take pleasure in their family, their lives and the outside and welcome strangers with open arms. Extremely well played by a naïvely sweet Nils Poppe and a radiantly kind Bibi Andersson, these two (with their baby son) are the only people happy. And that happiness even spreads to Block, who starts to forget his concerns with finding a secret to life in the simple happiness of an honest meal, kindly shared. Even Death comments that Block’s interest in the game seems to fade from here.

Block’s struggle to understand why we are here, his straining for some sign and his belief (perhaps) that with this he can escape Death slowly melts under his understanding that life is what is around us and the people we share it with, perhaps not some sort of cryptic puzzle for him to untangle. And that’s Bergman’s message as well perhaps, that among our concerns to understand and control our destiny, the most truth (and pleasure) can be found in not thinking about these things. Jof sees early on a vision of the Holy Mary (we do not see it only his face). His wife laughs it off, but later only Jof can see Death – if one vision is true, why not the other? Is Jof’s innocence and decency perhaps the key?

And that is why perhaps Jof and Mia are the only two to escape Death’s grasp. Block finds his moment of purpose – and the quiet smile von Sydow gives here is perhaps the finest moment of his performance – distracting an unknowning Death to let the family escape in the forest. Death relentlessly comes for the rest of the characters at Block’s estate – to be met with anger, begging, resignation, bitterness and a strange, beatific acceptance from the mute housekeeper, who Bergman slowly tracks in on until her face fills the frame.

Death then takes them all – giving us the film’s final enduring image, a recreation of Pictur’s painting of Death leading the dead souls in a grim dance to eternity across the hills, each of them flowing in a line behind them seen only by Jof. 

What is Bergman’s marvellously assembled – and it is perfectly filmed and edited – film about exactly? Finding peace and acceptance with what is around us and our place in the world perhaps, but it’s such a rich and rewarding film that it unravels other meanings and messages throughout every frame. It deserves to remain in fashion for as long as there are films.

The Beguiled (2017)

Nicole Kidman struggles to resist the charms of Colin Farrell in The Beguiled

Director: Sofia Coppola

Cast: Nicole Kidman (Miss Martha), Kirsten Dunst (Edwina), Elle Fanning (Alicia), Colin Farrell (Corporal McBurney), Oona Laurence (Amy), Angourie Rice (Jane), Addison Riecke (Marie), Emma Howard (Emily)

A remake of Don Siegel’s adaptation of the original novel, The Beguiled throws a feminist slant on a story of a confederate soldier, Corporal McBurney (Colin Farrell) who, in the later years of the Civil War, is found injured in the grounds of a girl’s school, where the women have continued to run the operation while the menfolk are consumed with (and by) the war. The school is run by the distant Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman), with the lead teacher Edwina (Kirsten Dunst) and five students of varying ages. All of the girls and women find themselves entranced (beguiled!) with the deceptively gentlemanly McBurney, whose true aims may be darker than assumed.

Sofia Coppola’s version of the story shifts the attention onto the women of the piece, and their plight and emotional journeys. This is a perfectly legitimate stance to take – and showing effectively a colony of girls and women in the 1860s living some sort of structured commune life is interesting and different – but Coppola’s film has a coolness and distance to it that ironically makes it far less than beguiling than it should be.

Beautifully filmed as the film is, it’s slow pace and meditative tone – as well as the rather obvious points it seems determined to make about male and female relations – actually serve to make the film less engaging than it should be. Wonderfully framed and painterly in its execution, with an effective mix of classical and 1970s style, it still never quite sparks into life.

The cast also struggle to bring a heartbeat to their characters. Nicole Kidman brings her customary reserve and elegance to a woman who has hints of a mysterious past that troubles her to this day, but the role remains distant and difficult to read – more than the film really requires. A clash or seduction between her and Colin Farrell’s corporal keeps promising dynamite but the explosions never really seem to come. Farrell laces his role with charm and a gruff masculinity, but the role misses a sense of his own darkness or manipulative nature until quite late, with the final act revelations making him appear more angry and bitter than the role really requires. It all kind of sums up the film that gets lost in its artifice and fails to uncover its heart.

The film, you could argue, does its best to beguile the audience with McBurney as the film’s character are. We are shown at every angle his vulnerability and tender politeness, and hidden from us for too long are his more manipulative elements. Coppola’s film becomes an intense study instead of sexual feelings and relations within a confined space. From sensual hand washes from Miss Martha, to intense declarations with lonely teacher Edwina, to not-so-innocent flirtations with the pupils, there is more than enough evidence that McBurney’s desire to stay may well be as much linked to seeing the school as having the potential to be his own private harem. The film’s failure in this intense sexual politics is that, while it captures moments of the simmer of attraction, it fails to really establish the danger that McBurney could suggest, as a violent man of action with complete control over a group of women.

Indeed the final moments of the film even suggest that the school itself may be a sort of siren’s bay – although lord knows McBurney is no Odysseys – which I found a rather confusing beat. Effective as the final images, or the film’s last supper betrayals, may be, they don’t carry quite enough wait because the film never quite nails the sexual tension it is aiming for, or the sensual danger it is trying to establish as a theme within the film. 

Other changes make less sense as well. Coppola deliberately changes the race of Edwina, from a mixed-race young woman to someone white enough to be played by Kirsten Dunst. While Dunst’s performance is fine, many of the themes of Edwina’s lack of confidence, her self-loathing, her feeling of having no place outside of the school, of being somehow less than other women are left in place. These themes of course make perfect sense for a mixed race woman in the 1860s who has landed a job through the connections of her father, but they make less sense for an attractive young schoolteacher with a privileged background. Coppola made the change because she felt that she could not do the theme justice, but she misses the fact that the very appearance of the character is the context needed for her to make sense.

The Beguiled is beautiful to observe and has its moments, but it never really comes to light the way it should. Thoughtful and poetic a director as Coppola is, she has created a film here that feels all artifice and no depth, that wants to paint a picture of the life of women in the civil war but never really has the energy and fire to make this come to life in a way to make the audience as engaged as they should be.

The Fisher King (1991)

Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges go on a quest in Terry Gilliam’s decent but overlong The Fisher King

Director: Terry Gilliam

Cast: Robin Williams (Parry), Jeff Bridges (Jack Lucas), Mercedes Ruehl (Anne Napolitano), Amanda Plummer (Lydia Sinclair), Michael Jeter (Homeless Cabaret Singer), David Hyde Pierce (Lou Rosen), Lara Harris (Sondra), Harry Shearer (Sitcom actor), John de Lancie (TV Executive), Tom Waits (Veteran)

In 1991 Terry Gilliam was seriously worried he might be unemployable. After the famous feud with his producers over the editing of Brazil, his follow-up The Adventures of Baron Munchausen had flown over budget and bombed at the box-office. For Hollywood Gilliam was the worst kind of maverick – trouble with no record of financial success to give him the licence to do what he wanted. So he was thrilled to be offered the chance to direct The Fisher King, his first ever “for hire” job, a sentimental but surreal romantic buddy movie. It’s financial and critical success almost certainly saved his career.

Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges) is a New York radio shock jock, whose show accidentally provokes a lonely and confused man to massacre the customers at a late night bar. Three years later and Jack’s career is over and he is working as a co-owner of a video rental star (and live-in lover) with Anne Napolitano (Mercedes Ruehl). One day – drunken and suicidal – he is saved from a gang of young thugs by eccentric homeless man Parry (Robin Williams). Jack discovers three years ago that Parry was a respected professor of English literature, whose life fell apart after his wife was killed in the same bar massacre that ruined Jack’s career. The two men are drawn together – but can they save each other?

The film is based on the myth of the Fisher King, the king charged with finding the Holy Grail but could not find it for years – only for a fool to present it to the king full of water to drink, revealing it was there in the King’s possession the whole time. The fool helps because he is “purer” than those more worldly around him. The idea that Richard LaGravenese’s screenplay is leaning on is that these two characters – Jack and Parry – alternate between them the roles of Fisher King and Fool, both slowly doing things for each other that change their personalities and allow them to adjust back into the world and become comfortable with the people they are.

Reading that it should become clear that this is a sentimental film – and it certainly is. It’s also hellishly overlong for such a slight story of tragedy leading to overcoming personal crisis. We know watching the film from the start that Jack Lucas is a bad guy – and Gilliam shoots his opening scenes of Radio presenting with great skill, using high angles, extreme close-ups and shots that prevent us getting any real sight of Jack, making him as impersonal and contemptable as possible in his shallowness, pride and thoughtless cruelty. It’s not a mystery to expect that we are due to watch a triumph of the human spirit film, in which Jack becomes a better man. The film takes a very long time making this simplistic point.

The catalyst is Robin Williams, in a role tailor made for him as a hyper-active, manic personality mixed with tragedy and depression. To be honest Williams is frequently over indulged in the role – despite his Oscar nomination – heading over the top too often, and often over-egging the pudding both in Parry’s energetic enthusiasm and also in his moments of tragic depression. Parry is given a romantic sub plot with Amanda Plummer’s nervous office worker (a character who is little more than a collection of quirks than a personality, and it’s a shame it’s led to Plummer being typecast in such eccentric roles) that is almost insultingly slight and one-sided (he comes across a bit like a stalker) and lacks any of the charm needed for the story to work.

Parry is used to tie the film into further Arthurian flourishes with his obsessions with the legend. Parry visualises a sinister Red Knight – a mental expression of his grief and horror at his wife’s death, which takes the form of the appearance of his wife’s blood splattered face – which chases him through the city. Parry is also obsessed with the discovery of the Holy Grail, which he claims can be found in a millionaire’s faux medieval castle in the centre of Manhattan. This Arthurian stuff is often rather crow-barred in, but holds more interest than traditional plot-lines of people rediscovering their humanity and capability of bonding with others.

Jeff Bridges actually takes on the far harder role as Jack Lucas, a character who has to go on a firm development from start to finish. While Parry is a deliberately eccentric figure, Jack is the one who must journey from arrogance and pride to selflessness and humanity. Bridges does it very well, with a neat line in under playing and an ability to suggest the warmth, shame and self-disgust that Jack works hard to cover up. He’s also blessed to share scenes with Mercedes Ruehl who is outstanding (and Oscar winning) as his girlfriend, the most humane, engaging and real character in the film, a woman who seems at first blowsy and cheap (Jack clearly believes she is beneath him) but reveals more and more depths and capacity for honesty, love and generosity.

Gilliam has a sharp eye for the huge gap between wealth in poverty in 90’s New York, and how the two worlds are geographically only a width of a piece of paper, despite being worlds apart. His direction uses many of his flourishes with great effect. Fish eyed lens POV shots, low angles, stylistic dream sequences, a dream sequence where Grand Central station is full of dancing travellers like a mighty ballroom – many of the sort of things you see in his films are here. To be honest, I found some of the flourishes a bit overwhelming in a story that is so slight and so grounded in just four people’s interactions and quests for salvations. But it works, and Gilliam gets some moments of romantic and platonic love that really work. But it’s still a slight film that goes on far too long, and it eventually loses the viewer in its time-consuming journey towards expected heart-warming moments.

Philomena (2013)

Judi Dench and Steve Coogan go on a road trip into the past in Philomena

Director: Stephen Frears

Cast: Judi Dench (Philomena Lee), Steve Coogan (Martin Sixsmith), Michelle Fairley (Sally Mitchell), Barbara Jefford (Sister Hildegarde), Anna Maxwell Martin (Jane), Mare Winningham (Mare), Sophie Kennedy Clarke (Young Philomena), Kate Fleetwood (Young Sister Hildegarde), Sean Mahon (Michael Hess), Peter Hermann (Pete Olsen)

Describing Philomena as a sort of odd-couple buddy road movie with a heart seems like exactly the sort of trite journalistic spin that Coogan’s Martin Sixsmith spends most of the film deriding. But it’s a pretty accurate label, in this heartfelt and entertaining film that mixes looking at Irish church scandals, with both the shallowness and promise of journalism and a heartfelt meditation on the virtues of forgiveness.

Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan), a former government spin doctor, dismissed from his position is struggling to find a new purpose for himself in writing and journalism. After a chance meeting with waitress Jane (Anna Maxwell Martin) at his editor’s New Year party, he is introduced to her mother Philomena Lee (Judi Dench) an Irish woman whose son was given up for adoption by the convent Philomena had been sent to over 50 years ago. She has spent years trying to find him, but made no progress. At first Sixsmith is dismissive of this human interest story, but slowly begins to invest in the story, as he and Philomena travel to the US to try and find her lost son.

Philomena is a film that doesn’t pull punches in its moral outrage at the decisions made by convents in Ireland in the 1950s to separate ‘sinful’ mothers from their children and find them new homes. The distress of the young Philomena is clear, and the steps the church took to put barriers in the path of helping these children and their parents reuniting (from burning records to bare-faced lies) are as infuriating as their moral superiority is outrageous in its hypocritical cruelty. But it’s not a film that wants to make a simple or political point. 

If the film has a problem with religion, it’s with the institutions that run it, not the faith itself. For all her ill-treatment, Philomena’s faith has been unshaken by all that has happened to her, and she like the film can separate the flaws of individuals from the principle of faith. The film may take aim at the Catholic church for making people feel sex is something dirty and shameful, but it won’t turn its guns on God himself. Near the film’s conclusion, Philomena even rebukes Martin for his rage (on her behalf) against the nuns who treated her wrongly, pointing out that she is the victim not him and that how she chooses to respond to it is her business – and if she chooses reconciliation and forgiveness that is her choice.

It’s a part of the films light and shade, very well drawn out in Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope’s script that mixes serious reflections on such matters as truth, faith and forgiveness with some good jokes and entertaining banter. The film deviates considerably from the true story it was based on – Philomena in real life never went to America – but in doing so it unlocks the story as a filmic narrative. The odd mother-son type relationship that the distant and cynical Sixsmith and the warm and engaging Philomena develop as they travel America gives the film heart, not least as Philomena constantly surprises Sixsmith with her worldliness and socially moderate views. The two characters end up bonding in a way that is straight out of a Movie-101 but it stills very real and touching.

A lot of that works so well because of the chemistry between the two leads. Judi Dench is just about perfect as Philomena. Dench expertly mixes the twinkle and charm of Philomena’s incessant Irish patter and capacity for small-talk (and fascination with everything from Mills and Boon to hotel toiletry) with a devastating emotional vulnerability and aching pain at the loss of her child, which has clearly been part of her life for so long she has learned to a certain degree to live with it. In one of her greatest screen performances, Dench will have you laughing one minute then spin on a sixpence with genuine emotional devastation or a capacity for forgiveness and reconciliation that seems impossible after what she has been through. The film builds real affection for both her old-world politeness charm and Irish loquaciousness and her emotional strength of character.

She’s well matched with Coogan, who uses his deadpan archness to excellent effect as Sixsmith. Although the film is called Philomena, it’s Sixsmith who represents the audience, and it’s his expectation of being emotionally manipulated by the story that we share at the start – and his growing investment in it that we also share. Coogan keeps the details very small, but along with a skill at delivering deadpan one-lines, he also has a considerable capacity for moral outrage and genuineness (well hidden) that serves the film very well. Sixsmith starts the story as self-pitying, supercilious and interested only in selling the story – the fact he ends it so bound up in rage at the treatment of Philomena, is a testament to Coogan’s skills for subtle character development.

Frears’ directs with a small-scale sharpness of camera and lack of flash that has been at the foreground of so many of his films, letting the focus lie on story and character. The road movie sequences that this film highlights so much are little triumphs of small-scale character story-telling, and while the jokes they feature – and even the emotional points they make – are familiar they are delivered with such grace and feeling they nearly all land.

Perhaps reflecting Coogan’s experience with the British media, it’s Fleet Street that emerges as the most 2D here, with Michelle Fairley playing a tabloid editor interested only in the story, delighting in tragic twists as they will make for even better headlines. It’s the film’s only real crudeness, but packaged within such a well-acted and richly entertaining whole, that makes a strong case for forgiveness not vindication being the true path to inner peace, it doesn’t seem to matter.

Pain & Glory (2019)

Antonio Banderas excels as a version of the director in Almodóvar’s Pain & Glory

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Antonio Banderas (Salvador Mallo), Penélope Cruz (Jacinta Mallo), Nora Nacas (Mercedes), Asier Etxeandia (Alberto Crespo), Leonardo Sbaraglia (Federico), César Vicente (Eduardo), Cecilia Roth (Zulema), Julieta Serrano (Older Jacinta Mallo), Raúl Arévalo (Salvador’s father)

Every artist in time reflects on his roots, and many explore these reflections in their medium of choice. The master of this in the world of cinema was Fellini, and any film that riffs upon the biography of auteur directors is destined to be described as Fellini-esque. That’s an appropriate title for Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain & Glory, which explores Almodóvar’s childhood spiced with a fictionalised version of himself in the present day, struggling with lack of drive and against a series of crippling illnesses. It makes for a gently structured, quietly moving picture shot with a classic simplicity but filled with genuine emotional feeling.

Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) is our Almodóvar substitute, his body falling apart from a range of illnesses and diseases that have prevented him from directing a film for years. Asked to present a screening of a classic film of his from almost thirty years ago, he contacts the lead actor of the film Alberto Crespo (Asier Etxeandia) who he has not spoken to since making the film. The two quickly re-bond – helped by Mallo’s curiosity about trying the heroin of which Crespo is a habitual user. Mallo finds the drugs not only help to ease his pain, but also bring back a flood of memories about growing up with his mother Jacinta (Penélope Cruz) as a poor peasant boy, educated in a convent school and teaching a young labourer Eduardo (César Vicente) to read and write.

Almodóvar is best known for a electric, dynamically assembled films but he is also a patient and intelligent craftsman and sensitive director with an eye for pace, and Pain & Glory is a far more meditative piece, as befitting the sense that both Almodóvar and Mallo are reflecting on their entire lives. The general structure fits in to a well-worn template of such films, with Mallo dealing with dissatisfaction and frustration in the present day but, through memories, finding a sense of peace and an ability to move on and reconnect with his life and work. But familiar as it is, it is a template that works exceptionally well – and I felt a real sadness and frustration that Mallo is drawn towards the superficial, short-term, comfort that drugs bring him when he is unable to write and direct films.

While I find some of the films attitudes towards drugs a little unsettling (Crespo seems willing to kick them at will, which I find rather hard to believe and even a bit irresponsible), it does show that this is a false nirvana for Mallo and that the more time he spends (as he eventually recognises) wallowing in this rather than finding avenues for artistic creation, is time wasted. Crespo (very well played by Asier Etxeandia, despite the character being a bit of a cliché) may well be a great actor – his performance of a Mallo short story memoir carries real emotional weight – but he is a lightweight human being, the very opposite of the far more deeper feeling (and thinking) Mallo. 

It’s that exploration of Mallo’s personality, art and how the two relate to his memories of his past that really powers the movie. Mallo is of course played by Almodóvar’s muse Antonio Banderas – and this might well be the greatest performance of Banderas’ career. I’m sure he has never been as sensitive, gentle, soft, tender and vulnerable as is here. Looking thinner and more delicate than ever before, Banderas keeps emotion carefully in check but playing constantly in the eyes. He’s fabulous, a wonderfully humane and beautiful performance.

Matching this quality, the sequences that really kick into gear in the modern storyline are those that carry real emotional meaning for Mallo/Almodóvar. The first is a meeting between Mallo and former lover Federico (Leonardo Sbaraglia, quite excellent – tender, heartbreaking and real) , which is an intensely personal, gently played, sad but also affectionate and hopeful conversation about a relationship loved and lost, which belongs in the past but which can bring a certain contentment in the future. It’s also a scene that demonstrates how the past sometimes stays better in the past, and that quieter reflections on lost relationships can be better and richer than restarting them. 

This also mixes in well with Mallo’s yearning to be free to continue his creative output, unburdened by disease and illness, mixed with a loving guilt for his mother who sacrificed so much to give him chances in life and whom he feels he failed in her final years (despite spending them caring for her in his home). The later sequences showing Mallo looking after his mother (a wonderful performance by Julieta Serrano) hum with an intimacy and emotional honesty that work all the better for the film’s careful interweaving of past and present.

Extended flashbacks – driven perhaps by Mallo’s exploration of his past fuelled by drugs – chronicle his childhood with his mother, marvellously played by Penélope Cruz, Almodóvar’s other muse. Cruz’s maternal, caring but strong-willed embodiment of Mallo’s mother is exquisite, from singing while washing laundry at the lake to sadly encouraging her son to believe convent school is his best chance of a full education. It’s clear that Mallo’s mother believes she knows what is best for her son – and, as a late sting shows, sometimes mean she takes drastic decisions without her son’s knowledge. The flashbacks cover everything from Mallo’s education to his first infatuation (and realisation of his sexuality) with a young married labourer who he teaches to read and write.

Pain & Glory explores all these memories with a touching intimacy but also a clear-eyed reality, and Almodóvar’s honesty in these scenes and with his own feelings about his past and how it has powered his art have a real emotional force to them. With superb performances throughout the cast, the film is a testament to the restraint and careful lack of flash, of a director willing to explore his life without flash or bangs. At one point Mallo opines “a great actor is not the one who cried, but the one who knows how to contain the tears”. It could be a strapline for the whole movie.

The Snake Pit (1948)

Olivia de Havilland struggles with her sanity in the engaging The Snake Pit

Director: Anatole Litvak

Cast: Olivia de Havilland (Virginia Stuart Cunningham), Mark Stevens (Robert Cunningham), Leo Genn (Dr Mark van Kensdelaerik “Dr. Kik”), Celeste Holm (Grace), Glenn Langan (Dr Terry), Helen Craig (Nurse Davis), Leif Erickson (Gordon), Beulah Bondi (Mrs Greer), Lee Patrick (Asylum inmate), Betsy Blair (Hester), Howard Freeman (Dr Curtis)

Virginia Stuart Cunningham (Olivia de Havilland) wakes up on a park bench with no idea where she is – and only the vaguest idea of who she is – and reckons she could be anywhere from a zoo to a prison. She’s actually in an asylum – or Juniper Hill State Hospital – and has been for some time, struggling with a schizophrenia and anxiety-related condition and with no idea of when – or if – she will ever leave. She is treated by the kindly, professorial “Dr Kik” (Leo Genn) and generally fails to recognise her husband Robert (Mark Stevens).

The Snake Pit is a very earnest but dramatically engaging and even quite moving story of one woman’s struggle to try and preserve her mental health, despite being stuck in a system that is a complete lottery with some patients lucky enough to be cared for and others dumped and forgotten. Litvak’s film is a passionate expose on the conditions that lack of funding and public interest had allowed to prosper in mental institutions in America, with parts of the facility little better than a Dickensian work-house, others like something out of Dante’s Inferno. It was a passion project for Anatole Litvak, who bought the rights to the book personally and pushed the studio to fund the creation of the film.

The story is centred around Virginia’s experiences of the asylum as she moves from ward to ward – low numbered wards being reserved for those considered likely to leave, with the ward number increasing as the prospect of the patient ever getting out of the asylum (or ever getting any focus from the doctors) decreasing. The staff are harassed, overworked, underpaid and frequently struggle with being heavily outnumbered by the patients, having only a few minutes a day for each one. They are also a mixed bag – there seems to be very little in the way of training – with some dedicated and caring, others seeing the patients as at best irritants and at worst little more than objects. Virginia’s real problems start when she gets on the wrong side of Ward 1 nurse Davis (Helen Craig), an officious, domineering bully who treats her patients like pupils in a finishing school and punishes ruthlessly any deviation from her rules.

Litvak’s film exposes the conditions here, but apart from the odd individual largely avoids attacks on the staff. Instead it seems to be the general air of indifference and disregard that society has for those who end up in these places that seems to be taking the brunt of the blame. Litvak’s direction is impeccable as he uses a combination of interesting angles, sympathetic close-ups and clever transitions and fades (which serve as a neat contrast for Virginia’s own struggles to understand where and when she is). In one particular tour-de-force moment, Litvak’s camera pulls up-and-away from Virginia in the middle of the hellish Ward 33 (the Snake Pit of the title), pulling away to make the ward indeed appear it is at the bottom of a pit with the patients a mass of figures within. 

Litvak’s film also benefits hugely from the simply superb performance by Olivia de Havilland. De Havilland brings the role such commitment and such emotional performance, that she is largely to thank for making the story (and not just the setting) as engrossing as it is. De Havilland is gentle, vulnerable, scared but mixes it with touches of determination and also carries with her a sensitivity that makes her as much a caring and gentle figure as it does a victim. She appears in almost every scene and dominates the film, handling the moments of quiet panic as well as she does the moments of immense distress. Her increasingly sorry state as she progresses down through the wards is heart-rendering, and her confusion and fear makes her someone we care for deeply, even while her concern and care for her fellow inmates – particularly a violent patient, played by Betsy Blair, who she takes under her wing and helps recover some of her equilibrium – makes her admirable and less of a victim.

Though lord knows she suffers enough, from claustrophobic locked-in baths (her screaming fit as she fears drowning being all-but-ignored by her dismissive nurses who have heard it all before) to being strapped into a straitjacket for god knows how long (after being provoked into an angry outburst by Nurse Davis). Around this she also undergoes bullying medical examinations from doctor’s unfamiliar with her case to watching her fellow inmates being mocked and laughed at my visitors. That’s not even to begin to mention the ECT treatment she undergoes at the start of the film (“to bring her back” from the edge of disappearing into a fantasy world), a series of detailed and observed procedures which are clinically sinister. 

Despite its many strengths, the film is dated in many ways. The original book avoided all reasons for Virginia’s illness. The film works overtime to give a “reason” for why she is, and of course this is rooted above all to issues related to Virginia’s failure to relax into the “proper” role for a woman in this man’s world. Her conditions are clumsily linked back to a troubled relationship with her mother and father, that led to a lack of development of maternal feelings. Guilt over a failed engagement has made her uncomfortable with marriage and nervous of men. Many of these revelations come out through a series of slightly clichéd therapy sessions that, for all the skill of Leo Genn’s performance as the doctor, carry the “and now we know all the answers” certainties of film psychiatry. 

Attitudes like this date The Snake Pit – so what if Virginia perhaps isn’t wild about marriage and isn’t sure if she wants children – and the film works overtime to suggest what will make her better above all is settling down into the sort of conventional life represented by her dull-as-ditch-water husband Robert, flatly played by Mark Stevens. While the film shows that healing like this takes time – and a lot of it – it also can’t imagine a world where a woman might find a life outside of the domestic norm healthier for them. But the film remains an emotional and moving one – moments like the one near the end where the patients listen enraptured, with enchanted faces, to a singer singing about home carry real emotional force – and it has a simply superb performance from de Havilland. Litvak’s film maybe slightly dated, but it’s still an impressive piece of work.