Possessed - 1947

Possessed (1947) starring Joan Crawford presents a mixture of dreamlike quality and cold, hard, and even bitter reality.  There are times when her character seems to skillfully navigate these realms, and at other times is only helplessly tossed in the unexpected currents between them.  In some scenes, we don’t know where she is in control and where she is not, and that is perhaps the most interesting facet of this film and points to Crawford’s real skill as an actress.

This is my entry into the Classic Movie Blog Association’s “A Haunting Blogathon: In the Afterlife.”  See more great posts from these terrific bloggers here.

The movie begins in a fog (or smog)-shrouded Los Angeles with Miss Crawford stumbling in a trance on lonely city streets in the twilight.  She appears without makeup, emotionally wounded, whimpering the name “David,” like someone lost, searching.  She is almost somnambulant but perks up when she sees men who might be David, but turn out to be strangers, and she is in an agony of sorrow and worry.  These are real city streets, and we’ll note that in the scenes set in actual locations, Joan Crawford’s state of mind is weak and confused, but on the artificial soundstage sets, she is in full command of herself.  At least at first.

When she enters a drugstore (add this to our collection of movie drugstore scenes), she collapses and an ambulance is called. She is whirled through the real Los Angeles into a real Los Angeles hospital, rolled on a gurney through endless halls where our viewpoint is only the ceiling, with bright lights above and the faces of interns and nurses leaning over to peer at us.  An ER doc leans right into our face with his light.  Joan, and we, are ordered to be taken to “psycho.”

The Psychopathic Department is kept behind locked doors and Crawford’s room has windows on the bars, so for a moment we are taken back to the nightmare years when mental illness reduced one in the eyes of society to that of an animal—but this post-war noir captures an era where curiosity about mental health led to progressive, if admittedly slow, changes.  We see a grim, tired, elderly doctor, played by Stanley Ridges, take on Joan as a patient, with a young doctor to learn—and to whom he can spout medical jargon and plot exposition. 

As he gives her an injection of some psychotropic drug, he prods her to talk and we are inevitably launched into our first noir flashback.   There are, of course, several.

David is Van Heflin, a self-possessed scamp and free spirit, the kind who doesn’t like to be tied down—at least not by Joan Crawford.  They enjoy a cozy evening in his lakeside cabin, as he plays a Schumann piece for her on the piano.  He is an engineer with a gift for mathematics, clearly educated in the arts as well, but down to earth enough to be wryly dismissive of whatever bores or does not serve him.  Joan, whom he feels is smothering him, is beginning to fall into both categories.  Like many men of his generation, and certainly enough of them in noir films, he is jaded by the war.  “Blame it on the army, blame it on the war, blame it on anything you like,” he says as to why he wants to break up with her.  She doesn’t accept the explanation.

We may be both sympathetic and impatient with Miss Crawford, as we see early on her need to cling to him.  He wants to go away for good, and she is heartbroken.  Yet, she is not helpless.  Not yet.  The scene shifts and we see she is actually a nurse, on private duty to a wealthy man’s invalid wife.  The man is played by Ramond Massey.  He appears enigmatic at first, but will later show infinite patience and mercy.

 

The wife is demanding, accusing, and we may feel we are being set up for somebody wanting to knock her off to get her out of the way.

Unfortunately for Joan, Van Heflin continues to have a connection to her through Raymond Massey, when Mr. Massey, spending the summer with his invalid wife in a nearby lakeside home, hires him for an engineering job in Canada.  In a moment alone with Heflin, we are jolted by the shift in her personality from a competent nurse, crisp and efficient, to a suspicious, screaming and somewhat nutty woman accusing Heflin of seeing another woman.

 

We are wrenched back to the psych ward and Doc Stanley Ridges proclaims she has split personality with a persecution complex.  We dive back into another flashback.

Massey’s wife has drowned in the lake beside their vacation home.  Police drag the lake in the nighttime for her body, which is found.  At an impromptu inquest held in his home, the death is proclaimed accidental, as the woman liked to walk near the water, and was felt to be despondent.  Interrupting the proceeding is a teenage girl and a small boy.  They are Massey’s children, who have been away in boarding school.  The daughter, played by Geraldine Brooks, accuses Joan Crawford of killing her mother.  Her mother’s letters to her were full of accusations of Joan carrying on with Mr. Massey behind her back.

As with any good mystery or noir, there are these such incidents that pop up that make certain people look guilty, and then certain other people, and then we’re not sure we can trust anyone.  Geraldine Brooks plays a not-too-dissimilar role here as she played in Cry Wolf, also made in 1947 (covered in this previous post) – that of a sensitive, somewhat mercurial young woman at first angrily spurning and then being drawn with needy affection to an older sister-type newcomer to the fold.  She had a lovely quality of being believably earnest and making us concerned over her walking a tightrope between making wise decisions and foolish ones. 

But we are immediately distracted by the prospect that Joan could have bumped off her patient, though she seems to have no yearning to be with Mr. Massey and become Geraldine’s new stepmother.  Ah, but Mr. Massey wants her to stay and take care of his little son.  Then he wants her to be his wife.

Did he bump off the missus to have Joan?

Joan is still seething over the reappearance of Van Heflin in her life when he is hired by Massey and comes to confer with him in his richly wood-paneled study about drilling for oil in Canada.  Just as the oil and coal industry today and its minions decry solar and wind power in a jealous competition for profits, Heflin and Massey joke, “Here’s to oil and down with atomic energy.” 

Joan taunts Heflin when he treats her with sly civility but otherwise has no interest in her.  

She tells Massey she is quitting her job now that the invalid is dead—she knows she needs to get away from Heflin—but he abruptly asks her to marry him.  She laughs a little hysterically—more a sign of her increasingly brittle mental health than rudeness, but she accepts and acknowledges she does not love him.  Mr. Massey here begins an extraordinary role as a humble, kindly, and gentle husband who counts himself lucky to be with her. 

He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to kill anybody.  Did he kill his wife?

 

Geraldine is told of the coming nuptials and is not happy, but she concedes to Joan that her father told her how sick her mother was, and that her death was not Joan’s fault.  Joan, in a patient and magnanimous gesture—or maybe just looking for an out—declares she won’t marry Massey if Geraldine doesn’t want her to, and that makes Geraldine feel bad.  They make up, and we have another shift in the story.

The wedding reception is in the Massey’s mansion, and who arrives but Van Heflin, glib, confident, and apparently relieved Joan is somebody else’s problem.  With his smart-aleck greeting to her frosty one, we have to wonder if he’s back just to tease her, and if his cynical charm hides a mean streak.  He comes upon Geraldine Brooks.  She remembers him from when she was a little girl, actually having proposed to him when she was eleven.  Van is amused and interested and—uh-oh, Geraldine might be getting a little serious.  We will discover soon that Van is getting serious, too.

Joan is furious and warns Geraldine to stay away from Van, but not out of motherly concern.  She’s still obsessed with him, and in the sane moments when she’s on the arm of her husband as the new lady of the manor, we might briefly forget the depth of her obsession.  But something happens again, even a small look or gesture, and she beings to spiral into angst and fury.

 

In a very complicated and fascinating sequence, Joan, having left a concert hall after Van Heflin shows up to join the flirtatious Miss Brooks, and now alone in the mansion on a dark and stormy night, the tension from her obsession with Van Heflin manifests itself in hallucinations.  The clock is loudly ticking, driving her nuts.  Van brings Geraldine home, and after her laughing, “We fooled her, didn’t we,” Joan confronts her.  Geraldine is cold with her again, and again accuses her of killing her mother to be with Massey, and Joan shoves her down the stairs, killing her.

 

Joan is shocked, frozen at the sight of Geraldine’s body crumpled at the foot of the stairs below. 

Suddenly, the front door opens and Geraldine enters, home from the concert.  The entire previous scene happened only in Joan’s mind.  She’s losing it, and Geraldine is sweet to her, is concerned about her, but does not know what is wrong.  Joan knows what’s wrong. 

 

She’s cracking up.

Sent to a medical doctor by Massey, she is defensive and walks out of the office, but confesses to Massey that his first wife is haunting her.  Massey takes charge and brings her back to the lake house so she can face her torments and all the creepy shadows there.  At one point left alone, crying, she walks toward the camera, walking toward the door buzzer that seems to call her, “Louise…”  It sounds like bandleader Alvino Rey’s “Stringy” steel guitar talk box.  “Looo-w-e-e-z-ze…”  The sound stands your hair on end, and suddenly this movie has morphed from a film noir to a mystery to a horror film.  Joan screams, and Massey comes to the rescue, comforting her, demonstrating that his first wife’s ghost is not here.

 

She wails that she is afraid, and confesses that she killed his first wife, helping her to commit suicide.  It’s a powerful scene by Joan as she breaks down and cries.  Massey tells her she wasn’t even there when his wife drowned.  Joan was in the village on her night off. 

Joan is relieved but amazed she had nothing to do with the death, and thanks him profusely, and we sense that they might have a happily ever after ending with a genuinely consoling marriage.  Massey takes her to dinner and they are prepared to enjoy themselves at last—but wouldn’t you know it, Van Heflin’s there at the restaurant with Geraldine.  They are engaged. 

 

He is just as uncomfortable seeing Joan as she is of seeing him; her obsession for him has at last made him awkward rather than dismissive.

 

Joan gets pointedly chatty, non-stop, laughing, trying too hard, and the others notice.  When she is alone with Geraldine, she urgently tries to warn her off Van.  To Van she remarks, “I told you once I’ll do anything to keep you and I will.”  She has turned from begging to threats.

 

Massey, meantime, wants to get her some psychiatric counseling, but she accuses him of wanting to put her away.

She drops in on Van, this time with a gun.  She uses it.  But she does not say, “If I can’t have you, nobody can,” instead she says, “You’re not going to marry her.  You’re not good enough for her.”  True that.

 

Back to the psych ward with kindly Doc Stanley Ridges again, and she mumbles “David,” and then, “I killed him!  I killed him!”

 

Doc meets with Massey and discusses the long work of her recovery.  Joan is not responsible, he says, for her actions, but does not know if the jury will agree.  It is a new world of understanding of mental illness, a glimmer of light among the noir shadows.  Raymond Massey will stand by her, and see her through whatever happens.

 

Directed by Curtis Bernhardt, it’s a film of skillful twists and turns.  Joan Crawford soundly delivers one of the best performances of her career, turning manic, angry, fearful, sorrowful, and desperate in a tour-de-force of closeups that reveal a vulnerability she perhaps preferred to conceal in other movies with broader, more theatrical performances. 

 

As many film buffs know, this was not her first movie called Possessed.  We might call it Re-Possessed, as the first film, from 1931, quite different in tone and topic, featured Joan Crawford playing opposite Clark Gable.  There she is a girl from the wrong side of the tracks gaining a position in high society in the wicked city as Gable’s mistress. 

 

We’ll talk about that next week.

 

Have a look at more posts in the Classic Movie Blog Association’s “A Haunting Blogathon: In the Afterlife” from these great bloggers here.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

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My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation.

 

Cry Wolf - 1947

In “Cry Wolf” (1947), we have another look at a non-swashbuckling Errol Flynn, this time as the master of a gloomy country estate where family secrets are deadly.

We’re dovetailing themes here, concluding a two-part look at Flynn’s non-Errol roles, and beginning a couple of weeks of Halloween-themed offerings. This movie even starts with credits printed in an exaggerated font that wipe mistily away, evoking the melting style of 1930s monster movies. We might even wonder if the title, “Cry Wolf” infers the presence of werewolves on this foggy bit of real estate. However, Maria Ouspenskaya is nowhere to be seen, so you may rest easy. No werewolves. They’re all at casting calls for other movies.

Instead, we have a spirited Barbara Stanwyck as woman on a mission, part Nancy Drew and part commando.

Mr. Flynn is Mark Caldwell, whose nephew and ward has suddenly died. Miss Stanwyck barges in on the preparations for the funeral announcing she is the bride of his nephew. She’s come for the inheritance.

When they first meet, Errol is at his desk in the library. He does not look up at her, but continues working, either because he is very busy or he wants to impress upon her that she is unimportant. He finally glances up, wearing round Harold Lloyd-type reading glasses. It’s an almost comic moment, and we never see them again for the rest of film, but it shows us from the start that Errol is firmly telling his audience he’s someone else they may not be expecting.

Geraldine Brooks makes her film debut as Flynn’s niece, also under his guardianship. She is the sister of the deceased nephew. She is a willful, unhappy girl, chafing under the protection and authoritarian supervision of her Uncle Errol. Miss Brooks, like the rest of the family, is stunned to have Miss Stanwyck plopping herself down at the dinner table as the newest member of the clan, but Geraldine’s isolation on this estate is so acute (Flynn forbids her to see her boyfriend), that she welcomes Stanwyck as a big sister. She needs one.

Jerome Cowan has a small role as Flynn’s brother, a United States Senator, with whom Flynn shares urgent, whispered conferences and hasty plans. Mr. Cowan’s most memorable movie role was probably as the attorney who prosecutes Edmund Gwenn in “Miracle on 34th Street” (1947), and he also played in a slew of “Blondie” movies, but he has one of those reliable character actor faces that make you think you’ve seen him in just about everything.

I wonder if this is the last time we would see Barbara Stanwyck with light brown, shoulder-length hair? She soon adopted the 1950s shorter cuts and famously let her hair turn gray. Perhaps the longer, darker hair was used in this film purposely to emphasize her youth. She is supposed to be a woman possibly in her late 20s, who has just completed her doctoral studies in Geology.

When Flynn, obviously suspicious of her abrupt presentation, questions her on her supposed secret marriage to his nephew with the enormous trust fund, she replies in quite an open and businesslike way that she and the nephew, who is named Jim Demarest, were not in love. They were good chums, and he asked her to marry him so he could circumvent the rules of his trust fund, which stipulated that he could not get any of his money before the age of 30, unless he were married. Jim promised to give Stanwyck $2,000 to use for her doctoral studies if she helped him out by becoming his bride. They intended to divorce after the check cleared.

I think if any other actress gave this astonishing speech, we might cringe with disgust or laugh with incredulous disbelief. Barbara Stanwyck has that take-no-prisoners glint in her lovely brown eyes that makes you not only believe her wild tale of practical avarice, but admire her for it as well. Rarely does a gold-digger earn such respect.

Or, is she truly after the millions in the trust fund? Is there something else? Miss Stanwyck hints that Jim told her of his scheming Uncle Errol, a control freak who tightly held the reins on the family and the family money, who might stop at nothing to keep what’s his. Is she here really to investigate the suspicious death of her college chum?

Mr. Flynn brooks no nonsense from anyone, but he suffers Stanwyck’s boldness with courtly, if cold, patience. He slings muted accusations back in her face, noting with wry and controlled confrontation that her husband’s death seems quite a convenient thing for her. The two have many scenes in this movie sparring intellectually, and gradually there are moments when the contempt and mistrust they feel for each other lifts ever so slightly, like the cold mist outside, to reveal understanding, and even passion if circumstances were different.

It is, like “That Forsyte Woman” (1949) discussed in our last post, a departure role for Errol Flynn. He is anything but swashbuckling or even energetic in this film. He displays restraint, coolness, and many layers of a mysterious man. It is perhaps as equally challenging a role as the one he played in “That Forsyte Woman” because it is cerebral, but he gets less opportunity here to display his terrific acting range. This is a more muted role.

Because this is a creepy mystery movie, we are more plot-bound and less delving into character here. If the actors open up too much and allow us to think we know them, there is no mystery. We have to be as uncertain about their integrity and motives as we are about what’s going to happen next.

So, Flynn is crisp, occasionally domineering, but always behind a gentlemanly, self-contained demeanor. He calls his new sister-in-law Mrs. Demarest with rigid propriety. He never fails to pull out her chair, or stand when she enters. He watches her like a hawk.

So does young Geraldine Brooks, but in her case it is with fascination and with needy affection, that can be as pitiful as it as manipulative. Big sister Barbara takes her in hand, reassures her anxieties, and listens to her complaints about Uncle Errol. She listens hard. She also asks questions. What, for instance, is that closed-off wing of the house used for?
Why, it’s only Uncle Errol’s LABORATORY, silly.

Gulp!

What’s a gloomy mansion without a laboratory? Look in any real estate ad, you’ll find that listed as one of the perks.

Barbara discovers that Uncle Errol is some kind of scientist, and that he works mainly at night.

Working in a home laboratory mainly at night usually raises eyebrows among the neighbors.

This mansion set, by the way, is a great piece of work. Several levels, grand staircases, dark wood paneling. It must have been used again for another film; it’s too good not to use again.

We are never told the exact location of the estate, but it is mentioned that a nearby town is called Salem, and the family owns a townhouse in Boston, so I’m assuming this is probably the North Shore of Massachusetts. Maybe so. All I can say is Flynn’s Tasmanian accent fits in better here than in Dodge City.

While Barbara mulls over the circumstances of her chum/husband’s death (He supposedly died of pneumonia, which makes her wonder, why the closed casket?), she comforts Miss Brooks’ attack of nerves. The girl claims to hear a man’s tortured screaming in the night. Uncle Errol has told her these spells of hers are only nightmares. Miss Stanwyck might agree, the girl is quite emotional, but then Barbara starts hearing the screams of agony herself.

When Miss Brooks shows her Jim’s bedroom, Barbara notices that his collection of pipes, and his clothes are missing. She begins to wonder if the screaming at night has been coming from a still very much alive Jim. She wonders if he is in the LABORATORY.

Morphing into Nancy Drew, Barbara decides to sneak a look in the second floor LABORATORY. It is locked, so she waits until the dead of night, and hauls herself up in the dumbwaiter.

(Just as a bit of trivia, in the movie “Smilla’s Sense of Snow” (1997), Julia Ormond also gains passage into a secret room by pulling herself up in a dumbwaiter. In “Sabrina” (1954), William Holden suggests to Humphrey Bogart that they sneak Audrey Hepburn into his room via the dumbwaiter. Clearly this is a feminine trait. Can you think of any other movies where women are stuffed into dumbwaiters? Or men? Children? Small pets?)

Now that I’ve thoroughly distracted you, the dumbwaiter scene is quite tense, because she’s timed her entrance wrong, and Flynn is still in his lab. He discovers her presence (with the help of her reflection in a water cooler, and a missing hair comb), but does not let on he knows she is there. He plans to reel her in later.

This is not Miss Stanwyck’s only stunt. Later on she tries to enter the LABORATORY another way: by climbing out onto the wet slate roof in a skirt and heels. Okay, they’re low to medium heels, not high heels, but they’re still heels. She drops herself through a skylight. She lands like an acrobat, not a shoulder pad out of place.

Barbara Stanwyck loved doing her own stunts, and did them right on through her “Big Valley” days when she was in her early 60s. All the fence climbing, falling from a horse, running through a dark mansion in this movie was probably child’s play to Barbara.

Another round of subtle cerebral sparring with Errol over a round of cordials he makes himself according to an old family recipe called “tears of blood”, (yikes) we are confronted with new suspicions about both of them. Who has whose best interest at heart? We may wonder if Errol intends to poison her. But he kisses her.

“Purely research,” he says with a sneer. He wanted to see if his first impression of her was accurate. She slaps his face over his intentionally cryptic comment, but we begin to wonder is she is afraid of him, or only of what may be her feelings for him. He is probably the first man she has ever met who is her match in intellect, self discipline, and courage.

Then Geraldine Brooks is found dead on the terrace outside her bedroom window. Miss Stanwyck believes Mr. Flynn has killed her for her share of the inheritance.

Overhearing a conversation between him and his gamekeeper, she thinks she knows where Jim is being hidden on the estate, and she sets out to find him. When she does, we see her chum/husband is Richard Basehart, so fine at playing sensitive, even emotionally brittle roles, but his part is unfortunately small in this movie. At first he does not remember her, and he tells her he is being drugged.

After a while, he snaps out of it, remembers her, remembers his wrath for Uncle Errol, who is trying to steal his money and trying to kill him.

The movie ends with a bold escape, a recital of hushed-up family scandals involving a history of hereditary insanity (as common a plot device in old movies as creepy mansions and secret laboratories), and a final showdown between Miss Stanwyck, Mr. Basehart, and Uncle Errol.

It’s a movie whose plot is a bit weak in spots, but is enjoyable for excellent work by all the principle actors. Errol Flynn adds another offbeat movie to his resume, and it’s fun to see him in this role, but it’s really Stanwyck’s movie.

She had the ability, probably better than most of her contemporaries, to show deep and passionate emotion with very little histrionics or demonstrative methods. Not that she couldn’t all-out rant or flip out with the best of them, but in roles such as this one, she seethed, smoldered, suspected, and, in turn, was suspected, with effortless transparency. Like falling off a log for this dame. Or a skylight.