The Snake Pit "Nido de víboras" (1948)

Director: Anatole Litvak

 Olivia de Havilland, Leo Glenn, Mark Stevens, Celeste Holm, Glenn Langan, Leif Erickson

 

 

 

Year by year, the stigma of mental illness in the U.S. is easing, but it is still with us nearly sixty years after the release of "The Snake Pit." That a major Hollywood studio was willing to address such a frightening and misunderstood issue in 1948 in a sensitive and reasonably intelligent way is remarkable.

Although the film is imperfect, I think it is a fairly accurate portrayal of treatments, conditions in state mental facilities and attitudes towards mental illness in the late 1940s. What makes "The Snake Pit" work as well as it does is the truly extraordinary work of Olivia de Havilland as Virginia, and Leo Genn as the benevolent, determined Dr. Kik. Their characters have to work with what mental patients and their doctors had at the time, which was precious little. Virginia is fortunate enough to have a husband, played sensitively by Mark Stevens, who sees no shame in seeking treatment for his wife. This seems unusual for a man of that time, but he obviously loves her and he is patience personified.

Apart from months and months of confinement to a state-run hospital, Virginia's course of treatment consists of electric shock treatments (now known as electro-convulsive therapy -- this software will not allow me to call it by its initials as is standard practice in the mental health community) and "truth" serum to aid her in recovering past memories. This was a routine course of therapy for the mentally ill at the time. The two cancelled each other out, however; the primary side effect of shock treatment is loss of short term memory, and truth serum is more a product of wishful thinking than an effective therapeutic method.

Dr. Kik reduces the number of shock treatments he has scheduled for Virginia, yet one particularly sadistic nurse attempts to prep her for another, presumably to make Virginia even duller and more listless than she has already become. Making patients compliant by force and induced trauma to the brain was the extent of professional psychiatric care for decades. Psychotrophic drugs (which are true miracles) and talk therapy, which when used in tandem have given millions back their lives, were years away. Actually, by the standards of the time, the facility and staff of the hospital to which Virginia is confined are fairly humane.

The ultimate diagnosis of Virginia's illness is a classic Freudian guilt complex, arising out of events beyond her control. Armed with this facile explanation and with no further therapy available after leaving the hospital except to return should her symptoms reoccur, Virginia is reunited with her husband and sent on her way. But not before assuming the role of wounded healer in a couple of touching scenes with a catatonic patient played by Betsy Blair, that ring quite true. The penultimate scene of "The Snake Pit" takes place at a dance for the patients. It's awkward and uncomfortable to watch until a patient (Jan Clayton) takes the stage and begins singing "Going Home," a lovely spiritual the theme of which Dvorak incorporated in his "New World" symphony. Her voice trembles until she begins to listen to the words she's singing. As the entire gymnasium full of people begins to sing with her, the room begins to swell with a haunting optimism. It is a little-known but profound and inspiring movie moment.