Possessed
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Movie Reviews of Possessed
Movie Review: "Just try to put it all behind you"
Summary: 5 Stars
Joan Crawford was nominated for an Oscar for Possessed in 1947. By then she'd already won the Academy Award for best Actress, but many critics view her role in Possessed, as the mentally unbalanced Louise, as by far her finest and most multi-faceted performance.
Crawford does a wonderful job of portraying a her character's illness subtly and accurately without resorting to tepid histrionics, and her gradual descent into maniacal hysteria is peppered with just enough head clutching and temple rubbing, to make us really believe that she's losing it.
The movie begins with Crawford wondering aimlessly along the streets of Downtown Los Angeles. She seems troubled, disaffected, and vacant, murmuring the name David over and over to herself. She dazedly walks into a diner, and asks the customers where David is. Suddenly she collapses and is hauled is off to hospital. Dr. Harvey Williard (Stanley Williard) is mystified by her condition, so commits her to the psychoactive ward.
After being medicated, she gradually she beings to open up and flashbacks reveal that her name is Louise, and that she has escaped from Washington D.C. after working as a nurse for Dean Graham (Raymond Massey), a wealthy oilman.
While looking after Dean's disabled wife, Louise has been harboring desires for David (Van Heflin), an itinerant engineer, who is also - employee. The passion, however, is unreciprocated. When Graham's wife is discovered drowned in the lake, everyone concurs that it was suicide, but Louise begins to blame herself. Yet it was her day off and she was in town, nowhere near the scene of the accident.
As Louise becomes more delusional, she begins to believe that Carol (Geraldine Brooks), Graham's attractive daughter is having an affair with David. Wracked with jealousy and fraught with hallucinations, she becomes ever more fixated with David, trying frantically to restore his love for he. Although she marries, Dean David remains her sexy, sadistic object of desire; a man that she wants so terribly to possess.
Eventually, Louise starts hearing noises in the night, rambling all over the place, chattering irrationally, and breaking into laughter for no reason. As she descends into mind numbing madness, the movie becomes darker and Curtis Bernhardt's astute direction puts you right into the heart of Louise's shattered mindset.
Possession offers quite a compelling account of the problems faced by the mentally ill at a time before psychoactive drugs were available. There really wasn't much help for these people - in one scene when Louise visits the local doctor, he tells her just to put whatever is bothering her "behind her."
Crawford's performance is extraordinary, showing that mental illness manifests, above all, in the eyes. They dart manically backwards and forwards, seemingly to stare inward instead of out at the world. The paranoid animal glint that flickers in Louise's most lunatic moments is definitely memorable.
The production design on is top-notch with the cinematographers managing to capture the dark, furtive atmosphere of both the Grahams' beach house, and lavish mansion where most of the action takes place.
Possessed is an excellent example of 1940's film noir and shows how a strong, independent woman can be derailed by an illness that is totally beyond her control. This film is an absolute must for fans of Joan Crawford and her eventual decline into a hysterical mess is just priceless. Mike Leonard June 05.
Movie Review: ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN
Summary: 5 Stars
"Possessed" (1947) is filled with classic elements of the film noir movies of the 1940's. Dark and compelling backgrounds, dramatic musical score, and the ever-present feeling of suspense. "Possessed" is one of my favorite Joan Crawford melodramas, running a close second to her brilliant performance in "Sudden Fear" (1952). Crawford plays a woman obsessed with a self-absorbed architect, David Sutton, (played cunningly by Van Heflin) who will stop at nothing to make him her own. Joan does a fabulous job playing this part for she seems genuinely possessed with it. Joan's character, Louise Howell, is the in-home nurse caring for the wife of an elderly and very wealthy Mr. Dean Graham, played by Raymond Massey. As the story progresses Massey's wife dies in a drowning accident (we never actually see the wife, only hear her cool, commanding voice nagging at Louise), which leaves Massey free to marry Louise. Massey's beautiful, young daughter, Carol Graham (played sweetly, yet with a bitter edge by Geraldine Brooks), does not like the idea of Louise taking the place of her deceased mother, however, in a Mildred Pierce like scene, Louise and Carol bury the hatchet. All seems to be going well for poor, troubled Louise until David Sutton comes walking back into her life. Throughout this picture, it seems Louise would be fine until David came back into her life. It was as though he enjoyed torturing her with his presence. David comes to Louise and Dean's wedding, he's always popping up at their house to talk business with Dean, he's at the same theater as Louise and Carol, and Carol invites him to come and sit with her and Louise, and he does. If he didn't enjoy torturing or just simply trifling with Louise, he should have left her alone. I think he not only deserved what he got at the end of the picture, but had been asking for it all the way through the movie. There are two memorable scenes in this picture that you're sure to enjoy. The first is when Louise returns home after the theater and is then followed by Carol and David, what she does to Carol is a real shocker here. The second is the creepy return to the lake house and Joan goes up to Mrs. Graham's bedroom and begins to scream. I highly recommend this movie, as well as it's sister film noir classics, starring the ultimate star, Joan Crawford: "Sudden Fear" (1952), "The Damned Don't Cry" (1950), and "Female on the Beach" (1955).Movie Review: Crawford at her Best
Summary: 5 Stars
When we think of Joan Crawford at her best, two films come to mind, MILDRED PIERCE and POSSESSED. Both films show Crawford as edgy and risk taking, but as Mildred Pierce she was driven in a positive way to achieve material success. But as Louise in POSSESSED, Crawford assumed a persona that in the hands of a lesser might have come off as a woman so over the top that we soon lose interest. But we do not because from the first moments of her walking the streets of Los Angeles in a mental haze until the final shocking moment when her innermost memories are dragged to the surface we see director Curtis Berhardt combine film noir moodiness with Grade B flasbacks to create an indelible portrait of a scorned woman instantly recognizable as an early ancestor of Glen Close from FATAL ATTRACTION.
Crawford has plenty of talent around her. Van Heflin as David is so perfectly cast as the "normal" or "average" lover that we want to eviscerate him for failing to see her lurking demons. Raymond Massey as her older husband is a powerful rock of support for all those around him, but Crawford is beyond marital aid. Geraldine Brooks as Carol, Massey's daughter and Heflin's burgeoning love interest, shows a convincing ability to extend her own range of emotion from an initial dislike of Crawford to a liking and eventually reverting to that same dislike. But from start to finish, this is Crawford's movie. She was a deserved nominee for Best Actress. When she made POSSESSED she was forty-two years old and played a Louise of approximately the same age. Geraldine Brooks tells us that Heflin is thirty-five, and the half dozen years gap between Heflin and Crawford adds a dark subtext that a scorned older woman feels for her jilting younger lover. Much of the film occurs in flashback with Crawford committed to a psychiatric ward, but we have no problem keeping the divergent time lines straight. A surprising amount of time is spent showing Crawford flat on her back staring unblinkingly at the ceiling and even in these crushing moments, she manages to emote a stifled inner self seeking release. How we are supposed to react to the many faces of a clearly disturbed Crawford is a function of what she manages to elicit from each viewer. Such a rare ability is probably why she managed to snag the Oscar nomination in the first place.
Movie Review: "Crawford At Her Absolute Best"
Summary: 5 Stars
Ask any Joan Crawford fan or historian what her zenith was as an actress and they will tell you it all started with her starring role in "Mildred Pierce" in 1945 followed by her excellent performances in the melodramas that followed, namely this blockbuster "Possessed". In "Possessed" Joan plays a private nurse involved with a man played by Van Heflin who doesn't return Crawford's love. Once she realizes her lover will never love her back she shoots him in cold blood. In this piece Joan plays the crazed woman to the hilt, without the campyness that would follow some of her later performances in "Straight Jacket" and "I Saw What You Did", movies that showed Joan playing women that were wronged by her lovers. For "Possessed" Crawford actually pulled a few strings in Southern California to view and witness what went on in loony bins and psycho wards in order to bring reality to her role in this film. Joan would learn that playing psychos were one of the hardest roles to endure. As she said" I always thought you pulled out all the stops and acted either manic or depressive and that was it". She also stated that she worked harder on "Possessed" than in any of her 81 films. When Joan teamed up with Cliff Robertson in "Autumn Leaves" in 1956 she used her experience playing a psychotic in "Possessed" to help teach Robertson how playing this kind of character was. For "Possessed" Joan Crawford would receive a well deserved Oscar nomiation as Best Actress, her second nom.Movie Review: you could have your choice of men but I could never love again
Summary: 5 Stars
After Joan left MGM she just made hit after hit after hit with Warners. "Possessed" was her third film with Warners and her second Oscar-Nominated role. Joan plays Louise Howell a woman on the brink of insanity. Joan actually plays the part of a kook very well. She is so believable because her acting is extremely dramatic. My favorite scene is the one where Louise pushes her lover's daughter down the steps. She was absolutely scary. As you may know, Joan made another picture (in 1931) with Clark Gable with this same title. Only an actress like Joan can star in two totally different films with the same title! Out of all of Joan's movies "Possessed" is certainly one of the very best (coming in just after Sudden Fear and Mildred Pierce (Keepcase).) You will love it! If you're interested in Joan's films from the 1940's, might I also recomend: Humoresque, Daisy Kenyon (this is not on DVD/VHS, however it is shown on TCM from time to time,) and Flamingo Road (1949).