Home Before Dark (1958)

Home Before Dark
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Written by Eileen Bassing and Richard Bassing
1958/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Amazon Instant

What is the natural reaction when told you have a hopeless mental illness? That diagnosis does you in; that, and the humiliation of being there. I mean, the indignity you’re subjected to. My God. — Kate Millett 

Jean Simmons shines as a woman who returns home from a mental institution only to find the same people that helped send her there waiting for her.

Arnold Bronn (Dan O’Herlihy) goes to fetch his wife Charlotte (Simmons) home from the state mental hospital.  He is clearly uncomfortable and very nervous.  She also is nervous and jittery, wanting so badly to get off on the right foot and reunite with Arnold.  She finds out right away that her step-mother and step-sister Joan (Rhonda Fleming) still share the house.  Bronn announces that he intends to continue to occupy a separate bedroom on the advice of Joan’s doctor (who said no such thing).

The step-mother is super controlling, all for Charlotte’s own good of course.  Joan seems more sympathetic.  Arnold has remained a stuffy, slightly pedantic, academic who is absorbed in his professional advancement.  People stare at Charlotte in the street.  The only person that Charlotte can really relate to is Jake Diamond (Efrim Zimbalist Jr.) , the family’s boarder.  But Charlotte wants to concentrate on reestablishing intimacy with her husband.  This is much, much easier said than done.

As we know from Gaslight, nothing is more crazy-making than being told one is imaging things.  This story shows that it is just as bad when the persons doing the telling mean well.  There were definite points when I thought this was straying into cliche territory but it never really did.  I loved the ending.  Recommended if the plot appeals.

Movie trivia from Robert Osborne