Possessed (1947)
Directed by Curtis Bernhardt

Film Review

There is an unsettling, almost intoxicating dreamlike quality to Possessed, director Curtis Bernhardt's most inspired film noir - a stifling sense of unreality which persists from the first shot right up until the very last frame.  In her most challenging screen role, Joan Crawford turns in a harrowingly convincing portrayal of a woman whose split identity causes her to slowly lose her grip on reality and ultimately prevents her from differentiating between what is real and what is not.  The film is one of Crawford's most compelling and darkest (a far more interesting work than her better known melodramas such as Mildred Pierce), skilfully using flashbacks and long point-of-view tracking shots to draw the spectator into the heroine's living nightmare, a crushing maelstrom of obsessive love and escalating paranoia.

Curtis Bernhardt is not the best known of film noir directors but he is certainly one of the most accomplished, as this film and some equally atmospheric earlier works - Carrefour (1938) and Conflict (1945) - testify.  Possessed differs from most films noirs in that the entire story is told from the perspective of one character, unusually the femme fatale, but what makes the film particularly interesting is that this character is a totally unreliable witness - she cannot separate real events from her deranged (and increasingly violent) fantasies.  This is what gives the film its focus and manic intensity, and what makes its dramatic climax so spectacularly shocking.  There is passion in this film noir, the passion of a raging fire and a thwarted love that has turned into the deadliest of poisons.

Joan Crawford admitted that her role in this film was the most difficult she played in her entire career.  She received an Oscar nomination for her performance, which she based on her observations of real psychiatric patients.  When she gets the bit between her teeth, Crawford is a formidable screen presence and, often as not, she compels her audience to identify with her and see the world through her eyes, as a cruel and unforgiving place.  In Possessed, we see quite a different Joan Crawford to the one we are used to, a genuinely disturbed psychotic individual who is more terrifying than sympathetic.  All of the characters that surround her - the pitiful but devoted husband, the odious womaniser she adores and the spiteful, unforgiving daughter (all played to perfection by Raymond Massey, Van Heflin, Geraldine Brooks respectively) - are helpless victims in her deluded fantasy.  Once Crawford's character has told her story, we cannot be sure what is real and what is imaginary, but we are captivated and moved by the tragedy of her existence.  In his darkest and most perfectly constructed film, Curtis Bernhardt conveys the full horror of living on the threshold between sanity and madness, painting it as an inescapable nightmare in which you feel you are slowly drowning for all eternity.  Chilling stuff.

Film Synopsis

A woman wanders the streets of Los Angeles as if in a daze, calling out the name David to everyone she sees.  When she collapses, she is taken to a psychiatric clinic where she is diagnosed as having a schizoid disorder.  As she comes to her senses, the woman gradually recalls the events that brought about her mental collapse.  She is Louise Graham, wife of the wealthy businessman Dean Graham.  Before she married, Louise was infatuated with one of Graham's top engineers, David Sutton.  At the time, Louise was employed by Graham to nurse his sick wife, which she did assiduously whilst carrying on her love affair with Graham's neighbour, David.  When David tells Louise he wants to end their relationship, Louise is devastated. Not long after his wife has drowned herself, Graham asks Louise to marry him and she accepts, just so that she can stay in contact with David, the only man she can ever love...