Private Worlds

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.

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.

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.

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.