The Snake Pit (1948) on Netflix
Approved19481h 48mDramaMystery
Virginia Cunningham finds herself in a mental hospital with no idea how she arrived there. She hears voices and fails to recognize her husband, Robert. Dr. Mark Kik takes on her treatment.
- Netflix4.4/5
- IMDb7.5/109,233 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
At the Juniper Hill State Hospital, Virginia Cunningham is a patient whose mind has slipped out of touch with the world around her. She hears voices, and her husband, Robert, is a stranger to her. Dr. Mark Kik takes on her case and searches for what lies underneath her illness. Pieces of her past surface as she is treated. A few years earlier in Chicago, Robert worked for a publisher that had turned down her writing. The two met again in the cafeteria, and she kept coming back there so that they could talk. Then Virginia left the city with no explanation. Robert settled in New York, and they met once more at the Philharmonic, where she gave a weak excuse for her absence and the two took up again.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Snake Pit (1948)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film led to changes in the conditions of mental institutions in the United States; in 1949 Daily Variety's Herb Stein reported that Wisconsin was the seventh state to institute reforms in its mental hospitals as a result of The Snake Pit.
- After public concern that real mental patients were being exploited as extras, the British censor added a foreword saying everyone on screen was a paid actor, and cut 1,000 feet of the film, deleting all straitjacket sequences and lighter scenes of laughter.
- Charles Schlaifler, the Fox advertising vice president put in charge of publicity for The Snake Pit, began testifying before Congress for more National Institute of Mental Health funds, and in 1951 became a spokesman for the National Mental Health Committee.
- Gene Tierney was the first choice to play Virginia, but Olivia de Havilland replaced her when Tierney became pregnant.
- Director Anatole Litvak insisted on three months of grueling research, requiring the entire cast and crew to visit mental institutions and attend lectures by leading psychiatrists.
- Litvak was an early adopter and master of the whip pan scene transition, using it no fewer than eight times in The Snake Pit.
- After the film's release, when columnist Florabel Muir questioned in print whether any mental institution allowed contact dances among violent inmates, de Havilland telephoned her to say she had attended several such dances herself.
