Oberarzt Dr. Monet

"Private Worlds" is a good 1935 film concerning mental health issues. The film stars Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Charles Boyer, Helen Vinson, and Joan Bennett. I confess I didn't recognize Joan Bennett.

The story concerns hard-working, dedicated psychiatrists McCrea and Colbert who have to deal with a new head of the hospital, a man who believes women have no place in psychiatry. The title comes from a quote by McCrea, that there is no difference between sanity and insanity - everyone lives in their own private world.

There is a subplot - the philandering McCrea, fooling around with Boyer's sister (Vinson), and a growing attraction between Colbert and Boyer.

I don't think I have ever seen Boyer so young, and he reminded me of Alain Delon.

Good movie, recommending a humane approach to the mentally ill.

Gregory LaCava directs a sensitive and thought-provoking film about the relationships among the staff and patients in a mental hospital circa 1935. The team efforts of psychiatrists Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea and threatened when misogynistic head honcho Charles Boyer appears on the scene. He feels Colbert has no place in a man's profession. His eyes are soon opened as he witnesses Colbert's skill and no-how with the patients. Provoking questions are injected here and there (ie., McCrea states that he feels there's no difference between sanity and insanity -- everyone moves within their own "private world"). The film has a humanistic and sensitive approach to the subject -- I felt involved and challanged by this films propositions. Excellent support is provided by Helen Vinson as Boyer's sister with a dark past. Joan Bennett is also on hand as the sweet wife of McCrea balancing the delicate mental world of a woman being "cheated" on by her husband. This is another Paramount film that seems to be forever lost to TV or video. Check those private collectors lists -- this film is worth having.

PRIVATE WORLDS earned Claudette Colbert one of her three Best Actress nominations (she should have been nominated more often!) yet it is one of her most elusive movies although it was an acclaimed film when released. I'm guessing it's so atypical for a Colbert vehicle that it didn't have the appeal for potential ratings like her delightful comedies or romantic dramas. Always a sensitive actress, Colbert is superb and ideally cast as a sympathetic psychologist. She and handsome colleague Joel McCrea are something of a team in their modern treatment of patients although some gossips speculate about their relationship. In fact, Joel is happily married to Joan Bennett and Claudette is a great friend to both of them. Trouble starts though when stranger Charles Boyer is brought in as manager to the hospital in a position McCrea had hoped for. Boyer wants to make big changes, including demoting Colbert as he feels her position is "man's work".

Some of this movie's twists can be spotted a mile away. When Boyer's sister Helen Vinson pops in the picture you know trouble is in store for the McCrea/Bennett marriage. The movie has a harder time teaming Boyer and Colbert as a couple; his sexism is so extreme it's hard to believe she could ever find him attractive, or he desire such a "modern" woman. The acting is fine although Esther Dale is so over the top as the shrewish head matron, the director really needed to put the brakes on her. Vinson isn't subtle, either but then both roles rather encourage their actresses to go overboard. On the other hand, there is an extremely well-played cameo by character actor Guinn Williams as one of the most troubled patients at the institution. Claudette is unfortunately dressed in a somewhat masculine wardrobe, complete with a tie, one of Hollywood's absurd ideas of what a professional woman should wear during the era. At least one is grateful there is no "Rosalind Russell ending" here in the battle between the feminist and the sexist (Roz herself bemoaned that fact about her movies in her autobiography). This is still a nice movie and a quite thoughtful for its era when escapism ruled the box office.

I'm a huge Claudette Colbert fan, but even I couldn't get behind the idea of her being a highly respected and successful psychiatrist. She's much more believable to me as a housewife in Since You Went Away, a socialite in It Happened One Night, or a reluctant businesswoman in Imitation of Life. But imagining the beauty with her Harlequin eyebrows suffering through medical school, and becoming so renowned that she becomes head of the ward at a famous psychiatric institute, stretched the suspension of disbelief too far.

Charles Boyer's character agrees with me. He plays the new supervisor at the institute, and he wants Claudette to leave. He thinks women should be kept barefoot and pregnant, or at least contented to remain secretaries. A female doctor just isn't competent - and especially one who specializes in psychology. She has too many emotions and she's far too easily duped by a patient's "normal" façade. She doesn't have the objectivity to be an effective psychiatrist.

I appreciated the progressive message of the story; not because I'm a modern-day feminist, but because I knew how much guts it took to make the picture in 1935. It's not something I would really watch again, but if you like to see women-empowerment movies before they were popular, check it out. In the supporting cast are Joel McCrea, Joan Bennett, Helen Vinson, Samuel Hinds, and Guinn "Big Boy" Williams.

I suppose in 1935 this was considered a fairly daring movie; a 'serious' look at psychiatry and the goings-on in a mental hospital, clearly designed to educate as much as entertain. Times have changed, however and today "Private Worlds", directed by the redoubtable Gregory LaCava from Phyllis Bottome's novel appears both ridiculously outdated and patronizing as progressive doctor Claudette Colbert, (miscast), and new superintendent psychiatrist Charles Boyer learn not only to work together but to fall in love at the same time.

At least both these actors are sufficiently talented to spark off each other when together though the rest of the cast are very much a mixed bag. As the doctor passed over for promotion in favour of Boyer and his mousy wife Joel McCrea and Joan Bennett are frankly terrible but Helen Vinson as Boyer's pushy sister who seems to be suffering from more than a little dose of nymphomania and the great Esther Dale as the old-fashioned matron are fun to watch. It may not be much of a movie but in its sensationalism, (some scenes could be lifted from Samuel Fuller's "Shock Corridor"), at least it's entertaining.