Oberarzt Dr. Monet

Though I was keen to watch this movie because of the terrific cast, I expected to find its presentation of psychiatric medicine dated and naive. While this is at times true (Claudette Colbert's treatment seems to be simply talking to the patients like a kindly elder sister), Private Worlds also makes several observations that are relevant today, including the then-daring one (for the general audience) that we all live in a private world, and that the difference between sanity and insanity may be only a matter of degree. The doctors in the smaller roles are far more plausible than Colbert, Charles Boyer, and Joel McCrea, who simply behave in accordance with their well-established screen personalities. But they are never so movie-starrish as to be unbelievable. The script cleverly uses the harshness of Boyer, the new head of the hospital, to forceful dramatic effect; while most of his diktats make us regard him dubiously or unfavourably, at the climax of the picture he is very harsh in a way that is clearly right, and much more insightful than we had thought. (Female viewers are helped in this favourable opinion by Boyer's looking extremely youthful and absolutely gorgeous.) Two touches show a disregard for credibility that would never pass today. No one is surprised that, in addition to being a psychiatrist, Boyer is qualified to perform major surgery, and is very good at it. And when a dying patient mumbles in Arabic, the staff say what a pity it is that no one there understands him. For heaven's sake, you think, why don't they get a translator? How long has the poor man been there? These are more than compensated for, however, by the outburst from the crabby old matron, who complains--that too many patients are being cured and sent home! How can the hospital keep going, she asks, if it isn't full of sick people?

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.

Based on a novel by Phyllis Bottome, Colbert and McCrea are progressive psychiatrists who try to improve patient treatment, against the wishes of the local "Send 'em to the padded cell" Nurse Ratched type (Esther Dale). Unfortunately, the new and improved treatment seems to consist of Claudette getting up in the patient's face, grinning like a jack-o'-lantern and saying, "I'm your friend!" That would make me catatonic for sure.

Joan Bennett, as McCrea's wife, feels threatened by his closeness with Colbert. McCrea expects to be the new head of the institution, but the board chooses a conservative outsider (Boyer). If you aren't expecting a hate-turns-to-love vibe for Boyer and Colbert, you haven't watched enough movies. To get revenge on Boyer, McCrea starts an affair with Boyer's nutso sister (Helen Vinson). Charles Boyer and Helen Vinson are the least likely siblings this side of Dean Martin and Wendy Hiller in Toys in the Attic, and we never learn why one talks like Paris, France, and one talks like Paris, Texas.

Gregory La Cava is a fine director of romantic comedy, but this film needed an Edmund Goulding or John Cromwell, someone who could develop the domestic melodrama implicit in this material. All of the "sane" people come close to breaking down at one point or another, and that could have been the unifying theme behind the script. The pacing is off, and the script is too talky. The four stars are effectively cast, and several rounds of script revision and perhaps a different director might have made this a much better film.

One of the mental patients (the one who keeps saying "I'm Carrie Flint!") is played by Jean Rouverol, who would be blacklisted and eventually would write for the soaps.

Until The Snake Pit and later One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest are superior films, the film about mental illness up to when these two came out was Paramount's Private Worlds. It came out in 1935 and gave Claudette Colbert an Oscar nominated performance as the dedicated psychiatrist who has no time for romance.

Unlike those other two classics Private Worlds deals more with the staff than with the patients. Colbert and colleague Joel McCrea have to swallow disappointment about McCrea not getting a promotion as head of the institution. Instead an outsider and a foreigner played by Charles Boyer gets the job. Boyer has some old fashioned notions about women in medicine, there are doctors and there are nurses, male and female because that's how God intended it. In the end Colbert does far more than just convince Boyer she's competent.

Boyer also has a sister who lives with him and if he doesn't have enough crazies to deal with on the job, Helen Vinson gives him an opportunity for research at home. She's flighty and irresponsible and she was responsible for someone's death and Boyer keeps her on a tight leash. Living with that at home, no wonder he's such a pill at the office. For the life of me I'm still wondering how the French named accented Dr. Manet, Boyer's character, has an American sounding sister. Vinson gives her usual good performance so I guess people overlooked that back in the day.

She sets her sights on McCrea and that causes an emotional breakdown in McCrea's wife Joan Bennett who was already jealous of all the time McCrea spent with Colbert.

Down in the cast giving a really great performance as the grandmother of Nurse Ratched is Esther Dale whose answer to all problems with the patients is lock them in the rubber room in solitary. Seeing how Colbert deals with Guinn Williams as opposed to Dale really shows Colbert's worth to the institution.

Claudette lost the Oscar in 1935 to Bette Davis for Dangerous and probably would not have won it again as she was the winner the year before for It Happened One Night. And Davis was not thrilled with her performance in Dangerous either.

Though I believe The Snake Pit and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest are superior films, Private Worlds still has its merits with some fine performances covering over a somewhat flawed story.

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.