“The question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” – Ayn Rand.
Cognition-(noun) The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.” A result of this: a perception, sensation, notion, or intuition.
These 4 particular films seem to be part of a trend of films that deal with either women’s brewing emotional turmoil or in the case of Jean Seberg’s Lilith- a creeping organic madness, perhaps from childhood trauma that is not delved into.
Let’s consider women either in distress or the oft-used “hysterical’ trademark that summons every neurotic ill associated with women. With these 4 films, it’s the same root problem: Why should society determine what counts as an emotional problem? This is especially true for women as if she were the engendering source of a specific kind of female mayhem, the creator of the tumult itself… Capable of giving birth, does she also give birth to a certain kind of madness directed inwardly or aimed outward at society and its unyielding ethical questions?
It’s not that I think Barbara Barrie is troubled because she falls in love with a black man. It’s that the world is troubled by her decision. Because of her choice, a society inherently cruelly punishes her by taking away the one thing she had personal power over, to remove her child from her life. Although she has a wonderful relationship with Frank, both are being judged and condemned.
The judge awards custody of her little girl to the biological father even though he is not the better parent. Not too long ago, women could be hospitalized just for being menopausal, based on what their husbands said.
Women were at the mercy of white male society’s judgment. So if a white woman loves and marries a black man in the volatile climate of the civil rights 60s, it would absolutely cause turmoil and quite the commotion.
Just for funzies, I wanted to paint some contrast into the mix, therefore pointing to films that truly deal with women and mental illness. More than cognitive commotion, they’re unstable, non compos mentis, deranged, knife-wielding, murderous femmes, traumatized, delusional dames… or all out CRAZY NUTS!!!!!!!!!
And…
I’ll probably write about all these films mentioned–the women on the verge of a nervous breakdown or already on the shoulder of the weary road of life with all four tires flat at some point. I’ll consider Charles Vidor’s Ladies in Retirement 1941 where Ida Lupino has to take care of her two dotty sisters, Elsa Lanchester and Edith Barrett, as the Creed sisters… They’re wonderfully cuckoo!!! I did a little piece on this gem a while back…
Robert Siodmak’s The Dark Mirror 1946 with Olivia de Havilland playing twins Terry & Ruth Collins, Gene Tierney gorgeous yet cunningly homicidal in Leave her To Heaven 1945, Laraine Day is totally unhinged in The Locket 1946, Joan Crawford as Louise Howell has a nightmare filled flashback in Curtis Burnhardt’s Possessed 1947.
“she is shown as alienated and stricken with psychological torture”– {source Marlisa Santos The Dark Mirror; Psychiatry and Film Noir
Eleanor Parker gives a stunning portrayal of multiple personality disorder in Hugo Haas’ Lizzie 1957, I’ve written about Liz Taylor almost getting her frontal lobe sucked out at the request of her domineering Aunt -(Katherine Hepburn) just to hide her son’s sordid secret life in Suddenly, Last Summer 1959, Jean Simmons tries to find happiness in a loveless marriage that isn’t her fault in the engrossing Home Before Dark 1958, Ingmar Bergman’s Striking minimalist piece about mental turmoil in his beautifully photographed Through a Glass Darkly 1961, William Castle’s groundbreaking gender-bending Homicidal 1961.
Carroll Baker is a traumatized rape survivor in Something Wild 1961 and what I found to be a misogynist romp wasting several wonderful actresses who were offered these humiliating roles in The Chapman Report. In particular, Clare Bloom deserved better with her talent -as a nymphomaniac struggling with her sexual desires until she ultimately commits suicide in The Chapman Report 1962 and good old William Castle’s once again with his Strait-Jacket 1964 starring one of the ultimate Grande Dames Joan Crawford this time wielding an axe in addition to her nightmarish flashbacks.
Now… none of the 4 women I am covering here are homicidal or dangerous, all these women are experiencing a psychic struggle with issues that speak from their place in the world as women… who are defining somehow in their own way, what their identity means to them… Well, perhaps Lilith is a bit more volatile in terms of how she wields her sexuality and influences men & women! But she is a divine innocent albeit-nymphomaniac living in a dreamy world of her own –not a homicidal vamp who devours men and spits them out… She is innocent without malice. The men do the damage to themselves…
“And her eye has become accustomed to obvious ‘truths’ that actually hide what she is seeking. It is the very shadow of her gaze that must be explored”--Luce Irigaray
Seance on a Wet Afternoon 1964
And of course the two titans of Grande Dame Guignol fêtes courtesy of Robert Aldrich…
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962 & Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte 1964
There’s always Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964), showcasing an unstable female in distress brought on by childhood trauma. Considering Hitch’s lavish colors and overt psychological embellishments that have created a pulpy romanticized landscape, which at times obfuscates the mental turbulence rather than letting it surface on its own. I chose to set this film aside and instead include the more off-the-beaten-path of psychological leanings pictures. 1964 seemed to be one hell of a year for Women in Distress by virtue of the female psychological crisis, once again to reiterate -not the ‘hysteria’ kind, mind you.”
“From the socially conservative 1950s to the permissive 1970s, this project explores the ways in which insanity in women has been linked to their femininity and the expression or repression of their sexuality. An analysis of films from Hollywood’s post-classical period (The Three Faces of Eve (1957), Lizzie (1957), Lilith (1964), Repulsion (1965),Images (1972) and 3 Women (1977)) demonstrates the societal tendency to label a woman’s behavior as mad when it does not fit within the patriarchal mold of how a woman should behave. In addition to discussing the social changes and diagnostic trends in the mental healthprofession that define “appropriate” female behavior, each chapter also traces how the decline of the studio system and rise of the individual filmmaker impacted the films’ ideologies with regard to mental illness and femininity.”
— from FRAMING FEMININITY AS INSANITY: RE PRESENTATIONS OF MENTAL ILLNESS IN WOMEN IN POST-CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD by Kelly Kretschmar
WOMEN ON THE VERGE… OF A BREAKTHROUGH!
Psyche 59 (1964)
The Pumpkin Eater 1964
One Potato Two Potato 1964
Lilith 1964
THE WOMEN!!!
Barbara Barrie
Patricia Neal
Anne Bancroft
Jean Seberg
LET’S BEGIN WITH…!
Alison Crawford (Patricia Neal) –“Love has to stop somewhere along the line, otherwise it’s almost “like committing suicide. “
PSYCHE 59 (1964) – Alexander Singer (A Cold Wind in August 1961 with Lola Albright and Scott Marlowe) directs the remarkable Patricia Neal as Alison Crawford, a woman struck down with a form of psychosomatic or hysterical blindness. Alison is aware that the affliction is all in her mind since the doctors can’t find anything organically wrong with her sight. Her ‘hysterical blindness’ and memory loss of the events leading up to her accident follows a fall down the stairs while she is pregnant. When she awakens, she is unable to see.
What is happening for Alison is that she is subconsciously blocking out the truth about her husband and her younger, coquettish sister Robin.
She is now living a very quaint life with her husband, played by the austere Curd Jürgens (I love him as the devilishly urbane concert pianist Duncan Mowbray Ely in The Mephisto Waltz, 1971).
Aside from her intense husband Eric, Alison’s very sexually charged sister Robin (Samantha Eggar) has now come to live with the couple after a divorce. Robin hovers very close to Eric like a carrion bird waiting to pick the bones of Alison’s troubled marriage. While Alison doesn’t have any cognitive memory of what led up to her fall, it’s obvious to us that she can sense the strong attraction between her husband and younger sister. At one time, her younger sister Robin and Eric had been involved before Alison caught and married him. Robin hasn’t stopped lusting after him. Slowly, Alison’s memory comes back as the flashes and images of what she experienced right before she lost her sight literally come into view.
Singer builds the tension in the air slowly, methodically, until it all comes to a head against the skillfully contained cinematography by Walter Lassally (The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, 1962, Zorba the Greek, 1964, To Kill a Clown, 1972).
IMDb tidbit-Patricia Neal was offered the lead in The Pumpkin Eater, but it was not 100% confirmed she would get the role. She then opted, to her later regret, to make Psyche 59 (1964) instead, since it was an official offer.
Neal gives a restrained yet powerful performance of a woman who is trapped in self-imposed darkness by her fear of the truth.
There is very subtle theme of self-brutality that exists for each of the characters, Alison’s self-imposed sightlessness, Eric’s indignant stoicism is palpable as he walks through the story like a trapped stray dog, He is agitated by Robin’s presence because he can not resist her.
Robin, her younger sister, must have been quite young at the time of her relationship with Eric, which begs the question of appropriate behavior on his part. Robin constantly asserts a seductive influence on Eric right in front of the disadvantaged Alison.
She is both a hyper-sexual narcissist and a bit self-destructive at the same time; either way, she gets off on playing the seductress, torturing Eric, right in front of her sister, dark sunglasses, and delicate pout. Although Alison suffers from blindness, she maintains a certain dignity that, although all three characters seem like she is, one of the trapped animals in a psycho-melodramatic forest, we get a sense that she will one day regain her freedom and spread her wings and fly away from it all, truth in hand.
Based on the novel by Françoise des Ligneris, with a screenplay by Julian Zimet (who wrote Horror Express 1972 and one of the best atmospheric little horror obscurities The Death Wheelers 1973 formally called Psychomania about a group of British motorcycle thugs and their pretty birds who dabble in the occult. Beryl Reid and George Sanders being one of their relatives, learn the secret of immortality. But you have to die first to obtain it.)
Psyche 59 is an interesting psychological mood piece, almost post-modernly impressionistic with its stark and polished black and white photo work. And Patricia Neal who had just won an Oscar for her role as Alma Brown in Hud 1963 and gave a command performance in 1957 as Marcia Jeffries in A Face in the Crowd is just exceptional as Alison who is trying to navigate the dark world surrounding her.
The film is strange and at times subtly cruel yet Neal’s character relies on our visual journey which becomes quite painful at times yet beautiful as she begins to emerge. In the film, Patricia Neal’s relationship with Curd Jürgens has an eerie parallel to real-life marriage to writer/spy Roald Dahl, but I don’t want to get into the sensationalized tidbits of public people’s wreckage.
The film also stars Ian Bannen as Robin’s poor, befuddled boyfriend, Elspeth March, and Beatrix Lehmann as Alison’s staunch, science fiction-reading grandmother—I wish I had one of those!
Continue reading “4 Outstanding Actresses: It’s 1964 and there’s cognitive commotion!”