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Post by topbilled on Jul 23, 2023 20:41:12 GMT
"You're not going to marry Carol. You're no good for her."
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Post by topbilled on Jul 23, 2023 20:43:22 GMT
"I've killed him. I've killed David!"
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Post by Fading Fast on Jul 23, 2023 20:43:32 GMT
"She's insane." "Is it hopeless?" "No."
Good to know. Psychiatry had a confidence in the middle of the century that it hadn't earned or deserved.
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Post by topbilled on Jul 23, 2023 20:45:00 GMT
Till death do us part.
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Post by Fading Fast on Jul 23, 2023 20:45:06 GMT
David was an arrogant jerk, but he did not deserve to die.
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Post by topbilled on Jul 23, 2023 20:48:29 GMT
David was an arrogant jerk, but he did not deserve to die.
Can only imagine what Carol thinks. We don't get her reaction at the end. Surely, she'd suffer as much as Louise now.
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Post by Fading Fast on Jul 23, 2023 20:49:16 GMT
Another fun one, good choice Topbilled.
I hear you on the chemistry, but I thought, overall, Van Heflin was outstanding in the role.
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Post by Fading Fast on Jul 23, 2023 20:49:59 GMT
David was an arrogant jerk, but he did not deserve to die.
Can only imagine what Carol thinks. We don't get her reaction at the end. Surely, she'd suffer as much as Louise now. She seemed to really love him. At least that's the impression I got in the scene at the bar.
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Post by topbilled on Jul 23, 2023 20:51:11 GMT
I think this film was sort of a screenwriter's plea, that some people do not deserve years in prison or the electric chair, because they kill due to mental illness. They need treatment and rehabilitation. Etc.
But I agree that David's life is still worth something. She will undoubtedly get off at the trial due to insanity. Of course, the production code doesn't allow us to see that final part of the story.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Jul 23, 2023 20:56:05 GMT
"She's insane." "Is it hopeless?" "No."
Good to know. Psychiatry had a confidence in the middle of the century that it hadn't earned or deserved. Isn't that the truth. They didn't even have any good antipsychotic drugs at that time and they were still blaming schizophrenia on bad mothers and upsetting events. The poor patients had to go through ice baths and long psychoanalysis sessions that only made matters worse.Well! Riveting movie. Good choice, Topbilled. Joan was fabulous in this.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Jul 23, 2023 21:01:48 GMT
I think this film was sort of a screenwriter's plea, that some people do not deserve years in prison or the electric chair, because they kill due to mental illness. They need treatment and rehabilitation. Etc.
But I agree that David's life is still worth something. She will undoubtedly get off at the trial due to insanity. Of course, the production code doesn't allow us to see that final part of the story. I got the feeling they were sending that message, too, and that's a good thing. Even now, there are people who think a person who wins a plea of insanity has gotten away with something, when they usually spend more time locked away than if they did the usual 20 years with parole for murder. The ones who go to mental institutions instead of prison don't get out until a psychiatrist says they're well and that may be never.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Jul 23, 2023 21:58:23 GMT
Andrea, about now you should hit play on the recording of you making noise in the kitchen to keep the family content. LOl I didn't see this until right now because, guess why? I had dashed into the kitchen to feed the dog.
Joan would have understood, a hungry Dachshund's whine can be louder than a Hilton Hoover.
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Post by Fading Fast on Jul 24, 2023 5:46:37 GMT
I wrote these comments a year ago and just tweaked them a bit after yesterday's "Sunday Live!" viewing.
Possessed form 1947 with Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, Raymond Massey and Geraldine Brooks
In her post-WWII movies, Joan Crawford was put in nearly every combination of a bad relationship or bad marriage imaginable. Sometimes, she's the aggrieved party and sometimes she's the "witch" from hell. Other times, she's just cracker-house crazy.
Most of these movies aren't that believable, but are pretty good soap operas. Crawford is usually too old for the role, but powers through it anyway by dint of personality, presence and talent. Plus, her movies made money.
Possessed has an intriguing start as a confused Crawford is found wandering the streets of Los Angeles in an almost trance-like state (similar to Ida Lupino in 1943's The Hard Way - everything is recycled). She eventually is taken to a mental ward where we learn what happened to her through flashbacks revealed under analysis.
It's a boldly self-assured mid-century psychoanalysis on display here where mental "diseases" are confidently diagnosed and neatly tied to their symptoms. Psychiatry only learned later what it didn't know, but in the mid twentieth century, psychoanalysis, in movies anyway, is amazingly precise.
Crawford, we discover, had been a nurse to oil tycoon Raymond Massey's invalid wife. At the same time, she was also dating a younger man, Van Heflin, who's a player whom she took seriously despite, to his credit, his warning her not to.
When Heflin breaks off the affair because Crawford keeps hounding him to marry her, she, after a few steps in between, agrees to marry Massey on the rebound.
Massey's invalid wife and Crawford's patient had, by this point, committed suicide. Even when Crawford tells Massey she doesn't love him, he still pushes for marriage. (Pro tip: do not marry someone who outright tells you they don't love you.)
Heflin, an engineer now in Massey's employ, begins dating Massey's daughter, played by Geraldine Brooks, who is also Crawford's stepdaughter (it's a soap opera). Complicating matters further, Heflin, who wouldn't marry Crawford, kinda asks Brooks to marry him.
Crawford, whose character only had, until now and at best, a tenuous grip on reality, starts spiralling out of control when she sees her former lover and stepdaughter engaged.
Crawford (for no good reason) begins to believe she killed Massey's first wife. She (a bit more understandably) also fantasizes about killing her stepdaughter. Clearly, she's in a full spiral now.
It's a good job of acting by Crawford. Yet somewhere along the line the story becomes a bit too much to really believe, especially as everyone around Crawford seems to miss her obvious descent into crazy-town. A descent that leads to the movie's dramatic climax.
Despite that, and despite having too many coincidences, the movie still touches you as we've all known a woman or man completely unable to accept being rejected by a boyfriend or girlfriend.
It's the heart and soul of the movie and it's powerfully poignant to see, especially when it ramps up when Crawford's former lover becomes engaged to a much-younger woman. That has the potential to make someone go over the edge, like it does to Crawford here.
Most of these post-war Crawford soap operas, like Possessed, are well worth the watch if you're in the mood for overly complicated and only marginally believable stories with a lot of backstabbing, broken hearts, salaciousness and, often, murder...and usually, a Crawford-delivered slap.
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on Jul 24, 2023 17:26:54 GMT
She can't let David go.
It's a shame, Massey is three times the man Heflin is. Related to the discussion of if Van Helfin was the right actor for the role of David, as well as why is Louise so possessed by him: The plot not making it clear what attributes David has that makes Louise so drawn to him, is key and why I believe Van Helfin was well casted as David. David doesn't have any A plus attributes, but instead is B plus in most things (similar to Van Helfin screen persona). Louise isn't drawn based on any specific A plus attributes, and therefore, Louise can't find a replacement for David since there are too many boxes to check. E.g., say David was played by one of the really handsome actors like Taylor, Flynn, Power etc... Casting that type of actor would give the impression that the main reason for Louise's obsession was looks, and Louise could easily find another man with A plus looks and thus replace her need for David. As noted, the Massey character is 3 times the man David is in many ways, but those ways are not enough for Lousie to be satisfied and replace the hold David has on her psyche.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Jul 24, 2023 18:43:26 GMT
Those are good points, James. If one of those drop dead gorgeous actors like Robert Taylor or Gary Cooper played the part the audience would think she was just infatuated with his looks, but Van Heflin could be any man so it was the man himself not any particular attributes that we can all see.
And isn't that the way it is with our friends who Fading Fast makes us think of when he says, "We've all known a woman or man completely unable to accept being rejected by a boyfriend or girlfriend?" Don't we all look at each other when we finally meet the object of such over the top affection and whisper, "Him? That guy?"
One thing I think our generation forgets when watching these old movies is how much the women of that generation gave of themselves when they committed to a man without marriage. When we first meet Joan she's obviously very much at home in Van Heflin's house, we know they are, if not living together, at least more than just dating. At a time when most women either waited for marriage or expected marriage to follow soon after, a woman in Joan's position would have definitely expected the relationship to move forward to marriage -- even if she had been warned.
It would have been a rare woman who casually moved from hooking up with one man for a short time and then someone else next month. They just didn't think that way. Van Heflin's part could have been played by a C- actor and Joan would have been just as clingy and desperate not to be pushed aside, because in her mind he belonged to her. She had given him her whole self and she was past the point of no return.
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