The patients and staff of a mental hospital undergo a number of melodramatic moments as they all come to grips with their rather pedestrian mental health issues. Being an MGM motion picture production, the institution is not some grimy state run place that serves low cost meals and whose halls reek of urine and carbolic. Instead, this place is more like a country club/resort with all the amenities, a modern turn on the tres chic sanitarium run by Claude Rains in Now Voyager.
Presiding over the institution is Charles Boyer as the director, but Richard Widmark has all the manic energy as the doctor trying new, less traditional methods on the residents. The most bizarre fact about this flick is that a large part of the plot hinges on which new drapes will be hung in the library - conventional ones or those based on the drawings of sensitive, shy but troubled patient John Kerr. There is lots of back and forth on this subject to the point of being unbelievable.
Amid all the kerfuffle on the drapery question, Boyer tries some of his long in the tooth continental charm on attempting to seduce Widmark's wife, the sizzling hot Gloria Grahame. Needless to say, Boyer strikes out embarrassingly. Meanwhile Widmark, who is getting tired of Gloria, starts to have feelings for the activities lady, played by Lauren Bacall. Oscar Levant does his usual droopy eyed slightly melancholic shtick as one of the residents. Now this is the same act that Oscar does while playing piano and attending Parisian cocktail parties in other films, but here, for some reason, the same behavior lands him in a mental hospital.
With all these pots boiling, the movie manages, against type, to finish up in a restrained manner, without anything exploding. A most unusual film for 50's MGM, or for MGM of any era previously.
Presiding over the institution is Charles Boyer as the director, but Richard Widmark has all the manic energy as the doctor trying new, less traditional methods on the residents. The most bizarre fact about this flick is that a large part of the plot hinges on which new drapes will be hung in the library - conventional ones or those based on the drawings of sensitive, shy but troubled patient John Kerr. There is lots of back and forth on this subject to the point of being unbelievable.
Amid all the kerfuffle on the drapery question, Boyer tries some of his long in the tooth continental charm on attempting to seduce Widmark's wife, the sizzling hot Gloria Grahame. Needless to say, Boyer strikes out embarrassingly. Meanwhile Widmark, who is getting tired of Gloria, starts to have feelings for the activities lady, played by Lauren Bacall. Oscar Levant does his usual droopy eyed slightly melancholic shtick as one of the residents. Now this is the same act that Oscar does while playing piano and attending Parisian cocktail parties in other films, but here, for some reason, the same behavior lands him in a mental hospital.
With all these pots boiling, the movie manages, against type, to finish up in a restrained manner, without anything exploding. A most unusual film for 50's MGM, or for MGM of any era previously.