meaninglessname
Richard Widmark. Gloria Grahame. Lauren Bacall. Sounds like a grade-A film noir or mystery. Not to mention Charles Boyer, Lillian Gish, Paul Stewart, Susan Strasberg and Oscar Levant. What could go wrong?How about an overlong talkfest where nothing much happens at a 50's- Hollywood style mental hospital that's more like a resort hotel for middle-class white folks who each have some minor tic they keep repeating over and over? And the key issue of the plot is which of three contending parties will get to choose the new drapes. Also a couple of suggestions of adultery that never reach fruition.The staff members as well all keep hitting the same note over and over in this tedious script. You begin to fell sorry for the cast, particularly poor Gloria Grahame as the clinic director's wife, required to keep throwing tantrums over nothing.There is a touch of mystery to the film. Why did MGM feel obliged to drag this slight material out to over two hours and film it in color and Cinemascope?
vincentlynch-moonoi
I'm not going to be as harsh on this film as some of our reviewers have been, because I think there's just one HUGE problem with it -- the casting of Gloria Grahame as the wife of psychiatrist Richard Widmark. It is the worst acting job I have ever seen in a film. So bad that not only should she have been given a Raspberry Award (had they been around in 1995), but she probably deserved the death penalty. Yes, her performance is that bad.On the other hand, in recent years I have come to respect Richard Widmark's acting more and more, and I thought he was excellent here. Lauren Bacall was good, as well, although she would have been much better for Grahame's role. Charles Boyer...well, the years were not kind to him in terms of acting; he is "satisfactory" here. Lillian Gish (who still had an active film career in the 1950s) has a humdinger of a rule here...perhaps a tad overdone, but nevertheless entertaining. Who cast the mentally ill Oscar Levant as a man suffering from mental illness; interesting that he accepted the role; it was once said of Levant: "There isn't anything the matter with Levant that a few miracles wouldn't cure". Tommy Rettig (the son in the "Lassie" television series plays Widmark's son here; a small role. I didn't realize it at the time, but the small role of Boyer's wife was played by Fay Wray ("King Kong"). Of particular note is the acting of John Kerr, who I thought was a very good young actor back in the day; he later left acting and went into law; here he effectively plays one of the patients.Key to the discussion of this film is the hanging of the drapes. Some people think it's ridiculous. I think not. Having worked in normal public schools my whole life, I've seen "normal" people go bananas over some mundane thing. What it amounts to is fighting over perceived "territory". So that such an issue would disturb the disturbed...I think is rather logical.So down to the nitty gritty: A highly flawed film due to the atrocious castings of Gloria Grahame, but otherwise a fairly decent film.
Bob Taylor
In the 1950's, Vincente Minnelli was making some of the strongest films in Hollywood. Pictures like Some Came Running and The Bad and the Beautiful were very strong and probing studies of American life; The Cobweb deserves to be considered alongside these great films. The tranquil world of a psychiatric clinic in the Midwest countryside (somehow I can see cows in the fields even though there aren't any) is disrupted by a power struggle between two strong-willed men: Dr McIver, a young man whose first important post this is, and Dr Devanal, who has spent more than 20 years at the clinic and seems to be burnt-out. A stiff-necked spinster, Victoria Inch, whose father had created the clinic does everything she can to aggravate the principals. The clash between old settled practices and innovative new ones is the subject of the film.People fret about the drapes--well really they're only the trigger for the clash. I have the strong feeling that by leaving Chicago to settle in this back-water, McIver has made a mountain of trouble for himself. His wife Karen (splendid performance by Gloria Grahame) is experiencing severe boredom and frustration; she's a sensual romantic woman who is being ignored by her husband, who is trying to find romance with Meg Rinehart (a cool Lauren Bacall). The romantic disappointments of the main characters make this film work.
jjnxn-1
Well what was that?! Cockamamie confection isn't even psychiatry lite just some nonsense that's all about the DRAPES!!!! Truly odd film is loaded with great actors and a ludicrous story. How it ever got the green light from the studio is mystery number one, that Vincente Minnelli said okay to directing it is the second although that would explain why so many great actors allowed themselves to be involved.Everybody gives overheated performances except Lauren Bacall who keeps a low-key dignity amongst the melodrama and Susan Strasberg offers a restrained quiet portrait of a shut-in who is making her first tentative steps towards reemerging into the world. The rest of the players aim for the rafters to varying degrees from Richard Widmark's impassioned but distracted doctor who is merely agitated then there is Lillian Gish who chews a bit of scenery as a bitter spinster as well as many other respected actors who show little restraint. The real standout though is Gloria Grahame as Richard's hot mess of a wife, she seems to realize how silly the whole thing is and pitches her performance to that tempo, she's jittery, flouncy and fun plus she looks great. Laughable take on mental health but good for one fun viewing as a camp catastrophe.
AD
