La telarana

This is a very strange film about a mental institution which is operated by Dr. Stewart McIver, (Richard Widmark) and Dr. Douglas Devannal, (Charles Boyer). Stewart is married to Karen McIver, (Gloria Grahame) and they are both having marital problems, she claims he does not pay much attention to her and especially in bed. Meg Rinehart, (Lauren Bacall), is a new employee with the hospital and is divorced and has a young son. All of the staff has their own serious problems as well as trying to take care of some very serious mental patients who require a great deal of attention. It is hard to believe that the main subject in this film is about just plain simple drapes and just where to hang them and this is causing a great deal of problems with the patients and staff. Richard Widmark and Lauren Bacall gave a great performance along with the very sexy gal, Gloria Grahame. This is a very crazy film and it will keep you guessing just how this picture will ever end.

MGM put together quite a stellar cast for The Cobweb, another film in the tradition of Private Worlds and The Snake Pit about an insane asylum and the politics of running the place. After seeing this crowd at work, I'm not sure that the patients haven't taken over the place as they did in that classic Star Trek episode.

Richard Widmark is a new psychiatrist whose new methods allow granting of more freedom of the grounds to the inmates. What Widmark's character might think today of the number of patients walking around completely free today with only our trust that they will take their medications is interesting to speculate. Anyway it puts him at odds with Charles Boyer who is the medical head of the place.

Boyer is a man beset with problems of his own of a personal nature, he's drinking and wrenching around openly, a man going through a midlife crisis and playing it out in front of everyone including all the enemies he's made. Widmark however as a former disciple of his can't quite pull the trigger to get rid of him.

And Widmark is having his own problems, a neglected wife in Gloria Grahame and a fetching Lauren Bacall to tempt him.

But the best performance of the film comes from that grand old lady of the screen, Lillian Gish. She's the civilian record keeper of the place and a politician to the max. She plays off Widmark and Boyer, in fact The Cobweb would have been a better film had she been the central character. There's also a real good performance by Olive Carey as a Ratched like nurse, Ms. O'Brien.

John Kerr, Susan Strasberg, and Oscar Levant are all inmates of the place which is a rather posh establishment for the richer brand of neurotics. You can't imagine Widmark trying his experiments in freedom on the inhabitants of The Snake Pit.

The Cobweb is a film whose parts are greater than the whole effort. It could have been a whole lot better than it was given the talent involved.

I can only figure ace director Minelli got this movie on assignment. Because however much drama is inherent in the screenplay, it gets drained by an uncharacteristically flat visual style. There are no close-ups to emphasize emotion. Instead, the camera remains impersonal regardless what's happening with the characters. Plus the actors basically walk through their parts, excepting a fiery Gish and Grahame. Then too, the scenes simply follow one another without heightening the various dramatic impacts. The overall result is to disengage the viewer from what's on screen, creating what amounts to a limp drama.

As I recall, the movie got promoted on the basis of its marquee cast, including the classic Lillian Gish making her first appearance in a number of years. The large number of names, of course, required the script be extended so that each star would get an appropriate amount of screen time. This results in a number of subplots and an over-stretched 2-hour-plus runtime, way more than the slender who's-going-to decide-the-draperies premise can sustain.

However, unlike most reviewers, I don't object to the running issue of the curtains, ridiculous as it sometimes seems. After all, this is an institution for troubled people including the staff, so they may well obsess over something seemingly as minor as a decoration. Then too, who makes the decision serves as a catalyst for bringing out the various unresolved conflicts among the residents. I just wish the surrounding drama was better written, acted, and directed. Certainly, the talent was there to do just that. Instead we're left with a film that remains obscure for good reason.

You can see what attracted Minnelli to this story, as it's partly about a conflict over decor. Maybe this worked in the novel, but it's hardly the stuff of compelling screen drama. Of course the choice of drapes is symbolic of independence to the patients, and symbolic of her power to Miss Inch, and it's actually a realistically mundane conflict such as might actually occur anywhere. It just seems to be much ado about nothing when it's acted out.

Minnelli uses a bit of the soundtrack of Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, here (the picture that trumped his own Brigadoon at the box office) - in a scene at the movies. Guess he had no hard feelings.

One of Minnelli's interesting misfires. Even though it doesn't really work, I've seen it three or four times.

The acting is good, overall. Richard Widmark (as the director of the clinic) has two leading ladies, Lauren Bacall and Gloria Grahame. This is one of the few times I've ever really seen Grahame miscast. She had a wide range, after all she played everything from Violet Bick in It's A Wonderful Life, to Rosemary Bartlow in The Bad And The Beautiful, to Ado Annie in Oklahoma. But I think you will agree her role defeats her best efforts here. She starts out very well but I'm not sure I always understood where she was coming from as the film wore on. Bacall plays a simple, sensible girl, and does a good job. Lillian Gish plays the unpredictable Miss Inch, Charles Boyer the self-destructing Dr. Devanal, John Kerr the young and artistic Stevie (a role originally announced for James Dean). Oscar Levant is called upon to go outside his usual comfort zone and I'm not sure he makes it. Susan Strasburg is excellent in a small role.

Well what was that?! Cockamamie confection isn't even psychiatry lite just some nonsense that's all about the DRAPES!!!! Truly odd film is loaded with great actors and a ludicrous story.

How it ever got the green light from the studio is mystery number one, that Vincente Minnelli said okay to directing it is the second although that would explain why so many great actors allowed themselves to be involved.

Everybody gives overheated performances except Lauren Bacall who keeps a low-key dignity amongst the melodrama and Susan Strasberg offers a restrained quiet portrait of a shut-in who is making her first tentative steps towards reemerging into the world.

The rest of the players aim for the rafters to varying degrees from Richard Widmark's impassioned but distracted doctor who is merely agitated then there is Lillian Gish who chews a bit of scenery as a bitter spinster as well as many other respected actors who show little restraint.

The real standout though is Gloria Grahame as Richard's hot mess of a wife, she seems to realize how silly the whole thing is and pitches her performance to that tempo, she's jittery, flouncy and fun plus she looks great.

Laughable take on mental health but good for one fun viewing as a camp catastrophe.