Obssessive love affairs have been a Hollywood staple for years upon years now with varying degrees of success, and here the formula wins. Joan Crawford, fresh out of her Oscar win in MILDRED PIERCE, acts the hell out of her role as the ill-fated Louise Howell, a former nurse who has collapsed in the middle of a street moaning "David... David.... " The thing is, she is an unknown person in a strange town and a team of psychiatrists try to find out the reason behind her madness.
POSSESSED is a good, soapy yarn told in flashback with some nice twists and turns, directed quite well by Curtis Bernhardt who gives the movie a moody noir feel, and while at times Louise's character can be quite unsympathetic, going from possessive to manic to moody (and more so once "David," played by Van Heflin, re-enters her life), there's a certain sorrowfulness about her inability to start again with her own life as a married woman, and thankfully Crawford is able to convey this perfectly. One powerful sequence which shows how great an actress (as opposed to star) she would have become if given true roles and a chance to emote while expressing little is the fantasy sequence where she imagines she has killed her step-daughter (Geraldine Brooks). Brooks has been going steady with Heflin and Crawford, not over him yet, is seething. When she confronts her, there is a struggle, secrets are revealed, and down the stairs goes Brooks. Then Crawford realizes this never happened, but to see her cruel eyes staring out from a face that looks tortured and evil and demented all at once as she waits for Brooks is chilling and the best thing in the movie.
The only flaw in the film is the need to explain Crawford's descent into schizophrenia at the end: it recalls the same procedure Hitchcock would adopt for PSYCHO. Madness is always best when left undiagnosed, but then it was deemed necessary, and this robs the film of what might have been a perfect ending: Crawford screaming "David! David! David...!" over and over again. Definitely one to seek and watch.
POSSESSED is a good, soapy yarn told in flashback with some nice twists and turns, directed quite well by Curtis Bernhardt who gives the movie a moody noir feel, and while at times Louise's character can be quite unsympathetic, going from possessive to manic to moody (and more so once "David," played by Van Heflin, re-enters her life), there's a certain sorrowfulness about her inability to start again with her own life as a married woman, and thankfully Crawford is able to convey this perfectly. One powerful sequence which shows how great an actress (as opposed to star) she would have become if given true roles and a chance to emote while expressing little is the fantasy sequence where she imagines she has killed her step-daughter (Geraldine Brooks). Brooks has been going steady with Heflin and Crawford, not over him yet, is seething. When she confronts her, there is a struggle, secrets are revealed, and down the stairs goes Brooks. Then Crawford realizes this never happened, but to see her cruel eyes staring out from a face that looks tortured and evil and demented all at once as she waits for Brooks is chilling and the best thing in the movie.
The only flaw in the film is the need to explain Crawford's descent into schizophrenia at the end: it recalls the same procedure Hitchcock would adopt for PSYCHO. Madness is always best when left undiagnosed, but then it was deemed necessary, and this robs the film of what might have been a perfect ending: Crawford screaming "David! David! David...!" over and over again. Definitely one to seek and watch.