Possessed
Cats: Set Your Recorders|This picture is one of those pictures that is great but could have been greater. Sometimes referred to as a “film noir”, it is a great tawdry melodrama where the stakes are high - mental illness and murder.
A woman is found in a diner after collapsing, she has been wandering the streets searching for someone named David. She is taken to a local psychiatric hospital where she treated with brilliant care by an incredibly sympathetic doctor. We discover her name is Louise and she is looking for an old flame for whom she still carries a torch, a torch the size of a Buick. She was married to an older man for whom she had been a nurse. David, a tough hard drinking mechanical engineer, happens to be friends with Louise’s husband. To make matters worse David begins a relationship with Louise’s new stepdaughter. You can see how this could be tough on the pathologically possessive Louise.
Joan Crawford is great at being the pathologically possessive, I want to say victim, heroine of this picture. Raymond Massey is as always great as the older man Louise marries. Although I love Van Heflin, he is wrong for this role. The part really called for someone with real animal magnetism, like Robert Mitchum for a prejudiced example. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great picture but to drive a pathologically possessive person to do the things that Louise does, we the audience have to see a reason. Someone like Robert Mitchum would have given what was driving Louise more believability.
Friday November 28th at 2:00PM on Turner Classic Movies.
