A trailblazing work in its depiction of psychoanalysis and mental illness, The Snake Pit came after Anatole Litvak’s failed attempt to make a film about Sigmund Freud. Instead, Freud’s framed picture hung on a wall and his ideas filled the film that became effectively the first overt depiction of the Oedipus complex in a Hollywood film, with Columbia’s The Dark Past following the same year.
Litvak, who during the war made films about soldiers suffering from and being treated for PTSD, came across the bestselling semi-autobiographical novel by Mary Jane Ward about a recently married woman (to be played by Olivia de Havilland) admitted to a psychiatric ward with symptoms of severe schizophrenia. Litvak bought the rights for a huge sum but there was no interest from any studio in this grim subject-matter. Later, Darryl Zanuck saw the potential and gave Litvak the green light to co-produce and direct. Despite months’ long research in New York hospitals, the first draft by Frank Partos and Millen Brand was rejected. Arthur Laurents wrote the version we see, but ironically remained uncredited due to a dispute with the Screen Writers Guild.
The cruel treatment of the patients in the film sparked outrage, quite surprisingly, in the UK where 12 minutes of the film had to be cut out by the censors. The film’s earnest humanist approach meant more investment in scientific facts, letting the drama falter at points but continually picking it up with potent visual ideas and fine dialogue. There’s also a great deal of attention paid to time (shots of clocks) and doors. Their symbolic significance aside, Litvak makes the mental hospital look like a stand-in for a concentration camp, with hollow-eyed, desperate women wandering around in numbered robes and Polish, Italian and German dialogue on the soundtrack. He relives his war memories in the form of melodrama. Like the post-war films of George Stevens, Litvak translates the horror into stories that seemingly bear no relationship to the memories and ideas that have shaped them. Wrapped up in multiple layers, the pain is too great to be revealed openly.

Ehsan Khoshbakht