Possessed (1947)

Possessed
Directed by Curtis Bernhardt
Written by Silvia Richards and Ranald MacDougall; story by Rita Weiman
1947/USA
Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Louise: “I love you” is such an inadequate way of saying I love you. It doesn’t quite describe how much it hurts sometimes.[/box]

Whatever you might think of Joan Crawford’s acting style, she sure does make a convincing crazy person.

As the film opens, we see the dazed and disheveled Louise Howell (Crawford) wandering the streets of Los Angeles and calling out for “David” to random strangers.  She soon suffers a complete breakdown into catatonia in a diner and is taken to the hospital.  We are then treated to some psychiatric mumbo jumbo as the doctors try to determine what is wrong with her and who she is. They give her a drug which allows her to talk.

Segue to flashback.  Louise has been having an affair with bachelor engineer David Sutton (Van Heflin).  This is evidently the first big love of Louise’s life and David is unsuccessfully trying to bring the relationship gently to a close over her clinging, pleading, and threats.  Louise is the private nurse to the pathologically jealous and chronically invalid wife of wealthy construction magnate Dean Graham (Raymond Massey).  David approaches Graham and asks him for a job in northern Canada, evidently with the intention of getting as far away from Louise as possible.  He gets the job.

That very night Graham’s wife commits suicide by drowning.  His children have been away at school.  When they arrive home, teenage daughter Carol, who has received letters from her mother accusing Graham and Louise of an affair, blames Louise for her mother’s death.  Louise wants to quit but Graham asks her to stay on and help raise his young son.

Years pass and David visits from Canada.  He continues to spurn Louise’s ceaseless advances.  She tries once again to quit her job.  Instead, Graham asks her to marry him.  Although she tells him she doesn’t love him, she agrees to the match.  But David takes to hanging around and soon is seeing the now 20-year-old Carol.  He feels for her what he never felt for Louise.  And so begins Louise’s further descent into madness.

She begins seeing and hearing things and becomes convinced she assisted Graham’s wife to suicide.  In her desperation, Louise launches a chain of events that eventually lands her in a strange city babbling to strangers.

Joan Crawford is completely over the top but it suits Louise’s bizarre character perfectly.  My main trouble with the movie was that it seemed to be asking for sympathy for her plight and painting the man as the villain of the piece and I just couldn’t buy it.  Instead, Louise comes off as an early stand-in for Glenn Close’s character in Fatal Attraction and I felt sorry for David.  If the plot and star appeal, this is certainly a well-made entry in the small noir/melodrama/woman’s picture genre.

Joan Crawford was nominated for an Oscar as Best Actress for her performance in Possessed.

Trailer