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.

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.

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.

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.