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The title refers to mental-emotional realms, the one you show the world and the one you keep concealed, "that's the dangerous one." Staff and patients at Brentwood Asylum, the psychiatrist (Joel McCrea) works along the divide: "I find very little difference between sanity and insanity." His lab partner (Claudette Colbert) is the institution's ace, driven and independent and able to soothe the burly escapee in the ward. "It's our job to release people, not to drive them further into themselves," she tells the matron (Esther Dale) who prescribes solitary confinement. The new superintendent (Charles Boyer) doesn't think much of women doctors, he's got his hands full with a destructive sister (Helen Vinson) but struggles to adhere to his adage, "comprendre, c'est pardonner." It takes a screwball-comedy specialist to regard the essence of broken characters, Gregory La Cava fills clinical spaces with inquisitive delicacy. (His camera can go from observational medium shots to expressionistic tilts and zooms to fit the heartbeat shifts of the drama.) The heroine's empathetic professionalism conceals the pain of a lost lover, the superior said to be "so conservative he creeks" sits by an Arabian patient's deathbed for one last prayer. The neglected pregnant wife (Joan Bennett) identifies with the young schizophrenic (Jean Rouverol), her tumble down the staircase makes for painful marital therapy. Not just a matter of physicians healing themselves, but of sharing in the human lunacy. "Everyone's had their crack-up around here. I think I'm entitled to mine." Boyer's presence in Minnelli's The Cobweb posits a conscious link, though the true affinity is to the Cassavetes of A Child Is Waiting. With Samuel S. Hinds, Guinn Williams, Dora Clement, Theodore von Eltz, and Stanley Andrews. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |