Stairway to Light

Stairway to Light (1945)

*** (out of 4)

Oscar winning short about how mentally disabled people were at one time thrown into dark dungeons and chained to walls until Dr. Phillipe Pinel determined that love could cure any disease. This short means well and tells an interesting story but I'm really not sure Charles Manson would be a better person if we just released him from prison and said we loved him.

Turner Classic Movies usually shows this as part of their Oscar month so that will be your best shot at seeing this.

This episode of MGM's long-running short subject series concerns Doctor Philippe Pinel. Never heard of him? That's something that can be said about most of the subjects of this series. Pinel was an indifferently successful doctor who became the head of an insane asylum during the First Republic. In attempting to understand what was actually wrong with his patients, some of whom had been imprisoned for more than thirty years, he made a great discovery. He realized that kindness was more likely to cure them than chaining them up and beating them.

Radical stuff at the time, and perhaps even in 1945, when this short was released. It won an Oscar for Best Short Subject.

The unassuming Philippe Pinel (Wolfgang Zilzer) takes up a position in charge of a prison for the mentally ill in Paris and is horrified by what he discovers. There are people, unkempt and uncared for, who have been kept in the dark, chained to walls and fed a diet of gruel, bread and water - and they have been there for decades. Rather courageously, he concludes that chains and pain have never "cured" anyone so he determines to release some of these people back into society. Now there is an understandable scepticism from the public at large as none of those freed are tracked or monitored and so could easily revert to their violent ways, so they turn on this man as he walks to work. It's going to take a somewhat miraculous intervention if he is to survive to prove the merits of his strategy. It's far too short a feature to really develop the story of this visionary fellow here, but the monochrome and menacingly scored photography does raise heckles as we come to terms with the out of sight out of mind attitude that prevailed across so-called civilised society as late as the 18th century.

What a wonderfully humane story, of a great man who needs to be better known for his innovations. I'm now on the lookout for a more in depth study of his work. I'm sure for one so pivotal in the treatment in those labeled as 'mad' or 'insane', that one must exist. Perhaps those who have seen this and were interested enough to investigate further, can recommend a good one

I've just seen this as one of the extras on the 2010 Australian (Region 4) DVD release of the 1945 classic "The Picture Of Dorian Gray". So if you're looking to find a permanent copy on DVD, in an excellent transfer, that's where you'll locate it. Hope that helps those who enjoyed this fabulous story

Sammy Lee's "Stairway to Light" looks at Philippe Pinel, who revolutionized how people deal with mental illness. This story is important nowadays because of how we see mentally ill people treated like criminals. Part of this is lack of understanding of mental illness, but it's mostly police forces that get trained to treat everything as a crime with no nuance. Does a cop have to kill a mentally ill relative of a celebrity or politician before the police get forced to treat mental illness as a health issue?

Anyway, this was the first time that I had ever heard of Philippe Pinel. Everyone who cares about studying mental illness should heed his advice. "Stairway to Light" isn't a great short, but a good introduction to Pinel's work.