Richard D

Forty-year old Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) and her mother (Gladys Cooper), a super-wealthy heiress, live a life of leisure in a sumptuous mansion, staffed with servants and maids. Her mother is overbearing and oppressive, and she controls Charlotte's only source of income, an allowance. Charlotte and her mother had gone on a luxurious ocean cruise where Charlotte met a ship's officer and fell in love with him, but her mother, a Boston Brahmin deeply displeased at his low social class, caught them and put a stop to the relationship, sending Charlotte into reclusiveness and depression, and loss of touch with reality. Back at home, Mrs. Vale contacts famous psychiatrist Dr. Jasquith (Claude Rains) to come to the house and examine Charlotte for what seems to be mental illness. Jasquith observes their dysfunctional mother-daughter interactions and determines that Mrs. Vale is the cause of Charlotte's mental illness, and suggests that Charlotte should spend a few weeks at Cascade, Jasquith's upscale, private sanitarium. Later, wanting Charlotte to find opportunities to socialize, he suggests an ocean cruise without her mother, where Charlotte again meets a man she falls in love with and they have an affair (although she never marries). Along the way, something causes Charlotte to recover and to develop into an emotionally mature, self-confident woman, and thus a model patient. Her mother is impressed by that and, consequently, begins to show some respect for Charlotte. Mrs. Vale, who is elderly and confined to a wheelchair, tells Charlotte that if she will take care of her, then Charlotte will inherit everything. Charlotte agrees to take care of her, but Mrs. Vale dies and Charlotte inherits nearly all of the estate. From there onward, Charlotte is an independent and very wealthy heiress, completely recovered from her mental illness. It's unclear what brought about Charlotte's seemingly miraculous recovery (in 1942, there were no medications explicitly for mental illness, and none are mentioned or shown in the movie), but the implication is that Dr. Jasquith's psychiatric expertise (similarly depicted in “The Snake Pit” by Leo Genn) and emphasis on her need for socializing brought about the cure. Eventually, Dr. Jasquith invites her to become a member of Cascade's board of directors. Paid “product placement,” pioneered by Edward Bernays, is very prominent in this movie, especially in the form of frequent cigarette smoking, which is implied to induce relaxation and to enhance romantic feelings between Charlotte and her lovers. Dr. Jasquith enjoys smoking, too, and this helps to facilitate the doctor-patient relationship, almost as if to imply that tobacco might contain something that helps her recovery. The luxury cruises, where Charlotte always finds love and romance, are also a form of product placement, suggesting adventure and therapeutic value. Above all, though, psychiatric expertise is the movie's centerpiece, depicted in the form of personalized, individual therapy, available to Charlotte thanks to her mother's ability to pay for the best.

Eight year-old Rhoda Penmark (Patty McCormack) is a serial killer, but she seems to be a perfectly normal and adorable child. When she kills, she does it in secret, so, at first, no one suspects her, except for the caretaker, Leroy (Henry Jones, deserved an Oscar for this), who is thought to be mentally defective. Rhoda's maternal grandmother, Bessie Denker, was a serial killer who poisoned her victims, which implies that Rhoda's psychopathy is hereditary, even though her mother, Christine (Patsy Kelly), shows no similar traits. Christine's adoptive father (Paul Fix) is a criminologist who studied and wrote about Bessie and rejects the idea of hereditary criminality. It's based on a novel and stage play, but the movie makers were required by the motion picture production code to show that criminals meet a bad end and that crime does not pay. Unlike the book, Rhoda meets her end in what would be called a coincidence or an "act of God." As per the production code (which was created by a Catholic priest), the movie is intended to teach audiences a lesson in morality. The title, "Bad Seed," suggests that a tendency to criminality might be hereditary, thus implying that such criminals are born that way and cannot be reformed. It explores the unresolved question of "nature or nurture?"

This 1944 movie is based on a real crime that was committed in 1927 by Ruth Snyder and her boyfriend Henry Gray. She murdered her husband, planning to collect $100,000 on a life insurance policy which, in today's money, would be around $1,720,000. The crime, trial and the 1928 execution of her and her boyfriend were sensationalized in the media. James M. Cain was a newspaper reporter who covered the crime and subsequently wrote a novel based on it. In the movie, the names and location are different and the perpetrators are glamorous-looking people, very much unlike the real-life perpetrators. Although highly rated as trend-setting film noir and nominated for a large number of awards, it won none and lost the Best Picture award to "Going My Way." Importantly, these two movies are in stark contrast to each other, "Double Indemnity" being about an unpleasant and lurid subject while "Going My Way" is "heroification" of an idealized, exemplary Catholic priest who works with underprivileged people in an impoverished urban neighborhood. Perhaps the judges, influenced by the Motion Picture Production Code, decided to vote in favor of morality over luridness, concerned about how movies are believed to influence the nation's ethos.

This 1951 movie is a propaganda spectacle based on a religious-themed novel and not on verifiable historical fact. It's a fictionalized version of the purported evilness and insanity of the Roman Emperor/dictator, Nero. However, class antagonism was deeply entrenched in ancient Rome, and Nero was despised by the Roman elite but well-liked by the lower class, all of which likely influenced the disapproving portrayal of Nero in the writings of historians such as Tacitus, an aristocrat. In this movie, Nero is implied to have caused the catastrophic fire of 64 AD, and plays the fiddle and engages in histrionics while Rome burns, but there is no objective evidence to prove any of this story. Fires were common occurrences and the people used crude methods, such as buckets, to splash water on the fires. Structures, such as big, multi-story apartment buildings, were cheaply constructed of wood, and food and grain storage facilities were likewise not fire resistant. As for organized religion, Roman emperors had good reason to fear the rise of Christianity because they perceived it as a potential challenge to their supreme authority. Eventually, in 391 AD, Emperor Theodosius the Great decreed Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire, and the government mandated everyone (most people were pagans) to convert to Christianity. The state confiscated the property of those (mainly recalcitrant Jews and pagans) who refused to convert and banished or killed them. Only about 5-10 percent of the writings of the ancient Romans exist; about 90-95 percent were destroyed by the Christian victors using methods such as massive book burnings and destruction of Roman public libraries. After gaining power, for over 1,000 years, until the1648 Peace of Westphalia, the Christians (Catholic church) did not tolerate any religious diversity, using violence and inquisitions to search out and destroy what they call "heretics."

This movie is in the category of "borderline personality disorder," as superbly portrayed by Glenn Close (Alex, which is a "unisex" name). She plays a psychopathic female whose underlying, well-hidden predatory impulses become manifest only when she begins to suspect that her lover, Dan (Michael Douglas), whom she picked up at a business party, intends to return to his wife and family. At first, she seems to be a wonderful and loving person, devoted to Dan, but personality disturbances suddenly show up when she starts to believe that Dan is using her. She's sex-obsessed, lonely and cannot bear the thought of him leaving her. In movie culture, predators are usually males, so a female predator, especially a violence-prone, murderous one, is counter-cultural. It's what sets this movie apart from most others. BPD is a psychiatric disorder (mental illness) and not a relatively minor psychological problem. A number of serial killers, including Aileen Wuornos and Jeffrey Dahmer, were diagnosed with BPD. Alex also seems to have impulse control problems, which is another category of psychiatric illness, known as "impulse control disorder," or ICD. Due to the nature of her mental illness, Alex is a potentially dangerous person, but, unless she commits a crime, she can avoid being committed to a mental institution or sent to prison.

Arturo Carrera (Dirk Bogarde), a Roman Catholic priest in Madrid during the Nationalist siege of the Spanish Republic, quits the church because he suspects (correctly) that it's on the side of General Francisco Franco's Fascist forces (the “rebels”) which are advancing on the city. He, like most ordinary people, doesn't know that the Nationalists are allied with the Nazis and aided by Hitler's Condor Legion, but nothing about this significant historical fact is mentioned in the movie. Clearly a propaganda instrument, the movie portrays the Loyalists as evil because of the violent methods they used to find pro-Fascist saboteurs, spies and fifth columnists as part of their defense against the advancing Nationalists and Nazis. In this civil-war atmosphere, nearly everyone is a suspect. The church is portrayed as a victim of Loyalist violence as workers destroy the cathedral where Carrera was a priest. Along with an emphasis on the Roman Catholic church as victim (subsequently, in Francoist Spain, the fascist church-and-state nexus imposed “National Catholicism” on everyone, including Jews and Protestants – similar to the consequences of the Catholic “Reconquista,” religious freedom was eliminated), the movie focuses on the romance between the former priest and a prostitute (Ava Gardner) and the trials and tribulations they endure as the Loyalists try to repel the Fascist invaders. Helpful, explanatory terms such as “fascists” and “Nazis” are absent from the movie, thereby keeping pre-internet audiences misinformed and confused about the real history of the Spanish Civil War. It is a post-modernist propaganda movie made to conform with and support the anti-Communist narrative that permeated all of post-WWII culture, especially movies.

A housewife, Virginia Cunningham, (Olivia DeHavilland) becomes delusional ("nervous breakdown"), so her husband takes her to see a psychiatrist (Leo Genn) who cannot help her in his office, so he commits her to a public mental institution for intense treatment, including electroshock therapy. Although an empathetic and very analytical person, the doctor cannot determine what really caused her problem and, at first, Virginia distrusts the doctor and the treatments, but she's required to comply because she has no legal rights as an institutionalized patient. Later on, she begins to trust the doctor's analysis, believing that he understands, and she appears to recover based on his analytical talk therapy. The deplorable conditions in the institution, as depicted, reportedly helped to gin up public revulsion of mental institutions, leading to closure of the institutions and de-institutionalization ("freedom") for the mental patients. Usually not reported in the media, and missing from this movie, there was no public provision to help them after their release and they were expected to return to their families, find jobs and to fend for themselves, as if freedom from the vile (as portrayed) institutions was the main issue and better for them than being institutionalized. The idea of freedom, freedom to go home, is intrinsic to the movie and distracts from the fact that mental illness is real. The patients were literally released onto the streets. Thus, mental institutionalization was treated as a social problem, the ostensible cure being closure of most of the public mental institutions. Shortly after this 1948 movie, about two years later, in 1950, the first major "antipsychotic" drug, chlorpromazine, was introduced and promoted with the claim that it would enable mental patients to become productive members of society (although not stated explicitly, the implication is that the drug cures mental illness). Chlorpromazine and its subsequent pharma analogs became the basis of psychiatry. Years later, a system of public community mental health centers was created to provide free or affordable mental health help for everyone who wanted it. Eventually, they were sold or given to private owners.

Psychiatric outpatient Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara), a wealthy socialite, is having a lesbian romantic relationship with her psychotherapist, Dr. Victoria Siebert (Katherine Zeta-Jones). Dr. Seibert is involved in promoting a new, experimental drug, Ablixa, for its marketers. Emily helps Dr. Seibert use inside information for illegal stock trading, but Emily's professional stock-trader husband gets sent to prison for the crime. Having lost her source of wealth and support, Emily claims to be depressed by her husband's imprisonment and, eventually, Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law) is assigned as her psychiatrist following her staged suicide-by-car attempt. He prescribes drugs for her and, after Emily's husband is released from prison, she has trouble enjoying sex with him and stabs him to death while in a stupor and on psychiatric drugs (a “polypharmacy” patient, she was already on drugs from Dr. Siebert), including Ablixa. Dr. Banks is secretly receiving payments to prescribe the experimental Ablixa for her and other patients, confident that he's doing a good thing by participating in pharma's research and development. Dr. Banks, unaware of her sexual and criminal relationship with Dr. Siebert, becomes Emily's defender and keeps her out of prison, promising the judge that Emily won't be a threat. Later, as a result of new information, he elicits a complete confession from Emily, and she cooperates with police in trapping Dr. Seibert for prosecution. After that, believing that she's free, Emily voices resentment of Dr. Banks' power over her during an outpatient treatment session in his office. Dr. Banks, having gained total legal power over Emily, abruptly reacts by committing her to a mental institution, even though she appears to be completely sane and rational. He had been censured by his psychiatric peers for being too lenient with her, so committing her is part of his attempt to polish his reputation that was tarnished as a result of the murder she committed while under his drug treatment with Ablixa. Although convoluted and difficult to follow, this is a message movie intended to reaffirm and reinforce the perception of psychiatrists as legitimate authority figures, regardless of a few isolated bad apples, and that perpetrators of crimes will be found out and punished. Some other movies that similarly encourage high regard for psychiatrists, especially for their implied forensic expertise, include Shutter Island, The Snake Pit, The Three Faces of Eve, et. al.

In this 1951 movie, Walker plays a wealthy, spoiled psychopath who strikes up a conversation with Granger's character while they're passengers in the lounge car on a train. There are strong undertones of the Walker character's homosexual attraction to Granger, especially as evidenced later on by an intimate letter he writes to Granger suggesting how good life will be for them together after Granger's estranged wife is eliminated. A key part of the Walker character's psychopathic personality is his enjoyment of targeting women for murder, mistakenly believing that will enhance his relationship with Granger. The movie suggests a relationship of latent homosexuality with psychopathy and criminality, reflecting norms and laws of that era. In the era when the movie was made, homosexuality was illegal and could only be depicted using hints or clues, as is done in this movie, but not any overt behavior or dialog. In real life, the lifestyles of these two actors were opposite to what's portrayed in the movie. In real life, Granger was a gay man, an illegal lifestyle that could've gotten him a prison sentence, but Walker wasn't.

It's a story about two married men whose deep friendship blossoms into romantic love. Both are masculine and there is nothing about either of them that would evoke suspicions of bisexuality. The romance goes along okay until suspicions arise from other people that the relationship may be something other than an appropriate same-sex friendship, and this is where potentially life-threatening danger shows up. One of them gets beaten to death soon after casting a suggestive smile at what he perceives to be a good-looking male guest at a family dinner in Texas. His death is falsely declared as due to an accident, there is no official investigation, and the assailants remain free and unidentified. Ultra-conservative rural Texas ranch culture, reinforced with strong family values, as implied in the movie, seems realistic. Same-sex romantic love, as depicted here, is deemed an egregious violation of traditional family values. Brokeback is the name of a landmark mountain that's in view of the camp site the two lovers use when working as ranch hands in Wyoming. The acting is great and the story seems realistic. It's a very good movie.