Fiction

THE SNAKE PIT

Anatole Litvak
USA 1948
107 min
V'06

Virginia Cunningham finds herself locked away in a state mental hospital with no memory of how she got there or why. As her illness progresses, she is shuttled between several wards that appear to be numbered according to level of sanity. Virginia suffers a debilitating relapse and falls to the ward for hopeless causes or the «snake pit». Based on a bestselling book by a novelist who had, herself, spent nearly nine months in a mental hospital, The Snake Pit is certainly a more compassionate picture of the mentally ill, but one that still must conform to the rigid structures and codes of the classical Hollywood film. For the audience of today, however, the primary draw of the picture is watching Olivia de Havilland deliver a particularly terrifying performance. (Matt Bailey)

Credits
  • Leo Genn - Starbuck
  • Leif Erickson
  • Olivia de Havilland
  • Mark Stevens
  • Celeste Holm
  • Glenn Langan
  • Helen Craig
  • Beulah Bondi
  • Millen Brand
  • Arthur Laurents
  • Frank Partos nach einer Vorlage von Mary Jane Ward
  • Leo Tover
  • Harry M. Leonard
  • Arthur L. Kirbach
  • Dorothy Spencer
  • Alfred Newman
  • Lyle Wheeler
  • Joseph Wright
  • Bonnie Cashin
20th Century Fox
Hollywood Classics Linton House, 39/51 Highgate Road London NW5 1RS, Großbritannien T 207 424 72 80 emese@hollywoodclassics.com
35 mm
bw
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