JohnHowardReid Copyright 26 July 1947 by Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Hollywood: 29 May 1947. U.S. release: 26 July 1947. U.K. release: 12 January 1948. Australian release: 18 March 1948. 9,755 feet. 108 minutes. NOTES: Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, Joan Crawford, losing to Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter.COMMENT: Possessed is rather heady stuff even if it could stand some sharpening and trimming. Until the first flashback it is a fully engrossing exercise in screen craftsmanship with Bernhardt excelling himself with such inventive directorial touches as the use of a subjective camera in the first hospital scenes with the camera tracking through the corridors on the trolley and doctors peering eerily into the lens. Indeed throughout the entire film, there is a superlative creation of atmosphere - the dark menacing lake house with its massively balustraded stairway and oppressive furniture, the invalid portrayed only by a querulous voice apart from the brief flash of the drowned figure rising into view from the murky waters of the lake, a subjective camera dollying through the shadowy passageways, the rain lashing the windows, the wind howling and chattering in the chimneys, the tinkling of Schumann on the piano - direction, photography, music, sound effects, art direction all coalesce brilliantly in places. At other times, alas, things are somewhat dull - particularly in some of the scenes with Van Heflin, an unsympathetic character whom the actor seems to be unsure how to play. Instead of letting the character stride across the screen in a full-blooded manner to match the dynamic playing of Miss Crawford, Heflin seems to be too restrained and too concerned with not making his characterization too unsympathetic, and as a result he seems weak and his performance pallid.Joan Crawford, as usual, is terrific, playing all stops out with the full melodramatic punch the script requires. Geraldine Brooks is also remarkably accomplished in a difficult role in which she is required to register many different changes of mood and attitude which she does most convincingly. Raymond Massey also has some marvelous histrionic opportunities, though he fails to take full advantage of them and plays his role in too straightforward a manner. The support cast is solid, though Stanley Ridge's cool analyst seems a little too studied (perhaps deliberately to contrast with the more professional approach Moroni Olsen brings to a similar role).Production values are superlative and a special tribute should be made to the special effects so skillfully and at times dazzlingly directed by William McGann.OTHER VIEWS: Crawford evokes all our heartfelt sympathy in this extremely polished film noir. It's given the Warner Bros class "A" treatment in every department and one suspects that the original Cosmopolitan magazine novelette was considerably enhanced for this masterly screen adaptation. Van Heflin is well cast as the heel, whilst the excellent Raymond Massey and Geraldine Brooks come close to rivaling Miss Crawford for our attention. Fluidly inventive direction joined with moody yet attractive photography in effective sets (particularly the gloomy lake house) all keep our eyes firmly where they belong - on the screen! -- JHR writing as George Addison.

lasttimeisaw A Joan Crawford's star-vehicle directed by German émigré Curtis Bernhardt, in POSSESSED (not the namesake film Crawford made in 1931 with Clark Gable), Crawford plays Louise Howell, an erotomaniac possessed by her desire over David Sutton (Heflin), an engineer who cannot reciprocate her with the same obsession.The film opens with a frazzled Louise roaming in the streets of Los Angeles, unable to utter another word besides "David!", she succumbs to a stupor and is taken to the hospital, under the treatment of Dr. Willard (Ridges), she lets up her stories in flashback from the falling-out between her and David, he considers her as a mere intermezzo in his life, yet she contends to be his theme song (aka, Schumann's Carnaval, Op. 9 piano solo), the music cue plays a significant role in the later stage which compounds Louise's descent into psychosis. A trained nurse hired to minister to the invalid wife of the wealthy industrialist Dean Graham (Massey, a salt-of-the-earth ilk but also mulish enough to seek the impossible) and after a horrific event crops up near the family's lake house, leaving Dean a widower, Louise choose to stay on with the Graham family in Washington D.C. on the strength of seeing David again, since Dean is his boss. When David reappears in her life, Louise goes all out to reignite their romance, but the latter is completely out of love with her, humiliated and disillusioned, she accepts Dean's marriage proposal in spite of both twig that she isn't in love with him. Loveless-but-affluent marriage usually functions well for most people, but Louise receives a bolt from the blue when she finds out David and her step-daughter Carol (a debutante Brooks) have become an item, which is the tipping point driving her into further hallucination where reality and unreality has blurred their finitude. Two murderous occurrences are confected, only one transpires to be veridical (the other sending up its blasé staircase confrontation trope), but the ending, nevertheless, ladles out enough psychobabble to augur everything will be fine for the misfortune-ridden Lousie. Nabbing her second Oscar nomination, Ms. Crawford makes for a barnstorming presence, histrionic occasionally, but speaking of a tarnished soul desperately hanging on her tapering pride, she is magnificent to behold (decked by jewelry and finery if she sees fit), less savory if she has to play the smitten lover against a miscast Hefin, whose thuggish comportment is a far cry from a mathematic engineer, one basically feels apathetic to his character's comeuppance, and wonders what women see in him is so deadly irresistible? That said, POSSESSED shows up Bernhardt's expressionist flourish in his spooky orchestration that torments Louise's sanity and boosts a strong showcase for its middle-age conscious star, who refuses to be sidelined, neither by the man she yens for nor by the ageist and sexist system, into which she has been sinking her teeth for over two decades starting from its bottom rung.

jimjamjonny39 I'm impressed with Joans' performance in this movie as she comes across as a very convincing troubled woman... over a man. The sad thing for the character she plays is she is never in control of her emotions when she's around the man that she is possessed about. When he's not there you'd never know that she has a problem. Did you ever love someone or have them believe that they were in love with you but it wasn't reciprocated? Wouldn't you avoid them as much as possible? Joan was 40 in this and I have to say she looked good, mind you I'm older than that now so... I felt for her, she tried to force something that wasn't there. Her psychosis, whether initialised from birth or created through her reasoning at the time, made it impossible for her to understand and accept to be true.

jacobs-greenwood Directed by Curtis Bernhardt, and co-written by Ranald MacDougall, this (cutting edge for its time) psychological drama features Crawford's second of three Best Actress Oscar nominated performances, and second of three pairings with writer MacDougall (she'd won for Mildred Pierce two years earlier). Crawford plays a disturbed woman who shows up in an unfamiliar city muttering names and words with no discernible meaning until a psychiatrist is able to uncover their origins using patience and drug treatment. The story he uncovers, during flashback storytelling, is this:Crawford was a nurse for a wealthy family that was also secretly in love with a confirmed bachelor, "in love with his work, and himself" engineer named David, played by Van Heflin (it's a mystery to me what women ever saw in this actor), who lives across the lake from the family's vacation home. Mrs. Graham is the invalid, confined to a wheelchair, to which Crawford's character Louise attends. David tires of Louise's overbearing possessive love and breaks off their affair. A distraught Louise returns to the Grahams and is chastised by Mr. Graham, Dean (Raymond Massey), for being absent, but she explains that it was her day off before she goes to attend to Mrs. Graham. An accident or a murder, it's intentionally a mystery, occurs causing Mrs. Graham to drown in the lake. The Grahams twenty- one year old daughter Carol (Geraldine Brooks) & preteen son return while an inquiry, by the coroner and Lieutenant Harker (John Ridgely), determines it was an accidental death.Dean hires David, then later falls for Louise, though she still loves David. Not knowing this, Dean still accepts Louise's respect for him as enough, hoping that will eventually grow into love. Dean marries Louise causing resentment from Carol who, not only blames Louise for her mother's death, but thinks she's a gold digger. However, Louise is able to smooth it over and the two become friends until Carol starts dating David, despite Louise's cautions. With the stress of it all, Louise's psychological condition deteriorates and she starts imagining things. As a former nurse, she has some realization of what is happening and goes to see a doctor, who confirms her diagnosis.Without giving away what happens next, or the ending, suffice it to say that Crawford gives a terrifically credible performance of a mentally unbalanced woman who goes over the edge.The various doctors are played by Stanley Ridges, Moroni Olsen, and Erskine Sanford.