He also says that electroshock treatment is now considered barbaric, which is false - it is a treatment that is still used for people with depression who are extremely suicidal and need alleviation of their symptoms quickly. He gives minutiae of some of the careers of actors playing minor characters, but says little about the state of psychiatry at the time. He also is rather uninformed about some details. It is disappointing that Solomon is so uncritical of the film. The concern about overcrowding of the asylums appears secondary. They give the impression that what is so awful about being in a mental hospital is being surrounded by other people with serious mental illness. The other inmates of the asylum are even more caricatured and if duplicated in a modern movie it would probably be condemned as offensive because the portrayals are both unrealistic and heighten the craziness of the patients. The portrayal of Virginia's mental breakdown and mental instability seems rather heavy handed, and does not seem to fit any clear diagnosis - she hears voices, behaves erratically, loses her memory, and has irrational fears. De Haviland's acting is versatile, and it is easy to understand why she won such high praise in the reviews yet to contemporary viewers her performance will seem a little stilted and exaggerated. He occasionally extols the acting and screenwriting, and tends to take a positive view of everything connected with Twentieth Century Fox. Solomon's commentary focuses on the actors in the film, their work in other movies, the documented facts about the making of the film, and the public reception. This was one of the first films to depict modern treatments such as electroshock therapy and cold baths, and it also shocked people because of the terrible conditions it showed in the mental hospital. In the 1940s, it was surprising to the public that de Havilland would take on such an unglamorous role as a mental patient, and the film won many awards. ![]() Much of the plot solves the mystery of how she came to be mentally ill, through many flashbacks. We see her at the start of the movie in an insane asylum, bewildered by her surroundings, and utterly confused about why she is there. ![]() The movie was based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Mary Jane Ward, telling the story of Virginia Cunningham played by Olivia de Havilland, who was a major Hollywood star at the time. The Twentieth Century Fox Studio Classics DVD release of The Snake Pit from 1948 features a commentary by Aubrey Solomon, who has written two books about the films and history of that film studio.
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