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.
© James Travers 2012
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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...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.