Two sequences set this apart from the mini-cycle of films Hollywood was temporarily producing on the theme of mental illness and the institutions set up to treat it such as the Frank Perry’s empathetic and occasionally lyrical David and Lisa (1962), Robert Rossen’s Lilith (1964) – both essentially romances – and Sam Fuller’s more brutal The Naked Kiss (1964).
Both sequences come early in the picture, setting, visually, the tone. In the first, crusading psychiatrist Dr Donovan MacLeod (Robert Stack) goes onto a ward to see a patient. It’s old-fashioned in the way of hospitals back then, patients in metal-framed beds. But as the camera pulls back, we see it’s not just a ward, it’s so big it’s a warehouse crammed full of sedated mental patients.
In the second scene, chief nurse Lucretia Terry (Joan Crawford) has her female staff in a room kitted out in leotards. And such attire is not for the titillation of the audience, equivalent to the kind of changing room sequence in later films designed to provide glimpses of female flesh. Instead, it’s a judo class. Terry is teaching the nurses how to defend themselves against attack.
The narrative focuses on MacLeod trying to change treatment of mental illness away from sticking patients full of sedatives or submitting them to the ubiquitous electroshock and locking them in a giant warehouse, keeping them well out of sight of the rest of the world who can’t understand why a loved one has gone mad. Terry wants to stick to the current method.
MacLeod crosses verbal swords all the way through with Terry and despite his persuasive tones no sign that she’s going to agree with his new idea of group therapy to attempt to cure those patients who have not yet fully succumbed to their illness, those who are still on the “borderline.”
There’s certainly plenty evidence to back up Terry’s fears that any slacking in security will result in harm to both nurses and patients given that among the group given substantial leeway by MacLeod are those who will try to stab people, set fire to the ward and break the golden rule of entering a male ward.
While the arguments are going on about the need to take a new approach to dealing with mental illness, the main focus is on the ragbag of patients in group therapy, people with much the same bunch of problems – although highly exacerbated – as you’d find within a group on a sinking ship or going to war. Issues with parents, children, sex and alcohol have brought these patients in the national care.
While there are moving moments, as you’d expect, there is no resolution at the end, and nothing in the way of miraculous cure. The best that can be hoped for is that if huge steps forward are made in patient’s understanding of their illness then perhaps they can be shifted from this appalling warehouse to a day center, spending nights at home, being treated during the day, much of their rehabilitation depending on reconnecting with the world rather than being shut off from it.
Lorna (Polly Bergen) hasn’t recovered from the death of her child, sees every consoling move from husband Jim (Robert Vaughn) as an attempt to instigate sex. Sex worker Marion (Janis Paige) is intent on getting drunk, from cocktails of any item that could contain alcohol, Edna (Barbara Barrie) is mute. New nurse Alison (Diane McBain), coming up against the old school Nurse Bracken (Constance Ford), is given a savage reality check.
Much of the tale is just about permitting the patients humanity, to see each other not as terminal victims of their illness, but to have human contact and interaction with others in the same boat. Naturally, feelings run high and the incidents I have mentioned recognize the dangers inherent in exploring new methods and the freedom that involves.
Joan Crawford (Berserk, 1967), permed within an inch of her life, has a ball as the tough cookie, the Nurse Ratched of her day, and would steal the show except for the sympathetic playing of Robert Stack (The Corrupt Ones/The Peking Medallion, 1967) and for the fact that Janis Paige (Welcome to Hard Times, 1967) is hellbent on stealing the show. It’s left to Polly Bergen (Kisses for My President, 1964) to put in the hard yards of showing the bewilderment and confusion that affects anyone struck down by mental illness.
Hall Bartlett (All the Young Men, 1960) is triple hyphenate here – writer, producer and director – and does a swell job of putting forth the argument without giving in to sentimentality.
Worth a watch.
The Magnificent 60s 