When this came up on TCM recently, I was driven to watch it out of sheer curiosity from the wildly disparate opinions expressed here. The most curious point was the oft-repeated opinion that the plot was about drapes. This is no more true than that Moby Dick is about a whale. The drapes are what Hitchcock referred to as the "mcguffin" (however you want to spell it) - a thing on which to hang the actual plot lines. In this case the varied interactions, neuroses and interpersonal problems of both staff and patients at a cutting edge mental institution are what the movie is about. I began watching out of curiosity but I was actually drawn into the movie by the character development and the interesting human dramas. The script is better than a lot of these comments would have you believe, and the cast is top notch - Boyer, Widmark, Gish, Bacall, etc., and of course Gloria Grahame, who is always a delight for the eye. Also worth mentioning is the wonderful colorful processing of those days, now sadly defunct, and the fascinatingly atonal score of Leonard Rosenman. The movie is well worth watching.
Review of The Cobweb
