Private Worlds

"Private Worlds" is a very good film, so when I call it 'soapy psychiatry' it's not really an insult...more an idea what to expect when you watch. It is set at a psychiatric hospital AND there are a lot of soap opera-like elements to the story. And, it's also very well worth seeing.

The story begins with Dr. MacGregor (Joel McCrea) interviewing to be the new administrator at the sanitarium in which he's worked. However, he's passed over for an outsider, Dr. Monet (Charles Boyer)....a man who appears much more old fashioned in his notions about psychiatry. As for Dr. Everest (Claudette Colbert), while she isn't thrilled at the rather sexist notions by Dr. Monet (who believes women do not make good psychiatrists), she is willing to reserve judgment and work with him.

An odd thing happens that I did not expect. Dr. Monet's vicious sister (who would today most likely be diagnosed with a Borderline Personality) begins flirting with Dr. MacGregor and does much to harm his marriage. It ultimately results in his wife nearly dying...and forces Dr. Monet to face up to how evil and manipulative his sister is. What's next? See the film.

While the film is not without problems, overall it's very well acted and presents a compassionate form of mental health treatment...a bit ahead of its time. Occasionally, it seems a bit unrealistic (such as how easily Dr. Everest is able to 'cure' patients with just a few words) and the casting of Helen Vison as Charles Boyer's sister is just dumb, as she has no French accent and his is very thick! Still, I could overlook these things and the film is quite good...so much so that I am surprised it's rarely seen on TV and should be.

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.

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?

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.

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.