The Snake Pit is one of the best-known cinematic portrayals of a psychiatric ward. Based on a novel written by former patient Mary Jane Ward, The Snake Pit charts the hospital course of Virginia Cunningham, (Olivia de Havilland), and the events that lead to her stay. She suffers from a wide range of symptoms including amnesia, auditory hallucinations, delusions and mood changes. Her compassionate physician, Dr. Kik (Leo Genn), gives her electroconvulsive therapy “to establish contact” and then does long-term, psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy to understand the reasons behind her illness. Much of her stay is spent on the ward for the sickest patients, a place she dubs the “Snake Pit.” Will she get out with her sanity intact or become a permanent resident?

There are moments of histrionics in The Snake Pit that have not dated well at all. De Havilland screams, “There’s something wrong with my head!” early in the film and generally acts the way insane people are supposed to act. The portrayal of the wards also sets many of the standards that other psychiatry films have followed to this day: cruel nurses, compassionate physicians fighting the system to help patients, female patients stricken by nymphomania, and “inhumane” electroconvulsive therapy. Supposedly the film led to significant changes in the way asylums were run in the United States following its release. It has high production values and is sympathetic to the patients it portrays (to a point), but ultimately it doesn’t hold up.  The transformation experienced by the main character due to psychotherapy is frankly unrealistic.  Six years after the release of the film, chlorpromazine was introduced and patients with psychotic illnesses began to be released from hospitals. The end of the asylum era owes far more to that medical advance than to any film. The Snake Pit is essential viewing for psychiatrists and those interested in the sociological aspects of mental health, but like so many prestige Hollywood films of the late 1940s and early 1950s it falls short of being an enduring masterpiece.  ✰ ✰ ½.

MJM  01-13-2012