The Cobweb (1955)

Director:

Vincente Minnelli

Writers:

William Gibson (novel) (additional dialogue)
John Paxton (writer)

Release Date:

7 June 1955 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

At an exclusive psychiatric clinic, the doctors and staff are about as crazy as the patients. The clinic head...

Plot Keywords:

Clinic | Psychiatric Hospital | Beautiful Woman | Psychiatry | Power Abuse

Cast

Richard Widmark	...	Dr. Stewart 'Mac' McIver
Lauren Bacall	...	Meg Faversen Rinehart
Charles Boyer	...	Dr. Douglas N. Devanal
Gloria Grahame	...	Karen McIver
Lillian Gish	...	Victoria Inch
John Kerr	...	Steven W. Holte
Susan Strasberg	...	Sue Brett
Oscar Levant	...	Mr. Capp
Tommy Rettig	...	Mark McIver
Paul Stewart	...	Dr. Otto Wolff
Jarma Lewis	...	Lois Y. Demuth
Adele Jergens	...	Miss Cobb
Edgar Stehli	...	Mr. Holcomb
Sandy Descher	...	Rosemary McIver
Bert Freed	...	Abe Irwin

Runtime:

134 min | USA:123 min (TCM print)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.55 : 1

Sound Mix:

4-Track Stereo (Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

Australia:PG | West Germany:16 (f) | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

In the German version of the Film, Richard Widmark's voice is dubbed by then famous actor Heinz Drache.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Stewart makes warm milk for Steve by heating chilled milk direct from refrigerator on stove for less than 20 seconds in on-screen real time.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Karen McIver: Can I give you a ride?

Movie Connections:

Featured in Point Blank (1967)

Neurotic 50s classic awaits rediscovery

Minnelli's "The Cobweb" explores the fascinating, disturbing idea of a mental institution where the personal quirks of the staff and their families unwittingly have an impact on the patients. In Minnelli's films, his neurotic, lonely, unsettled characters always lead to some climactic nightmarish outburst (even the musicals), but here the whole movie is really a neurotic outburst. Amazingly, it all snowballs out of seemingly the most trivial decision: the new draperies.

What's interesting is that there is no antagonist; like "Howards End" or Eastwood's "Unforgiven", all the characters do bad things for understandable reasons and thus construct the cobweb. This compares favorably with other nuthouse movies, especially ones about the group therapy system--"Cuckoo's Nest" (based on Ken Kesey's novel of 1950, 5 years before "Cobweb") and "The Caretakers" with Joan Crawford as the inflexible head nurse. Those films tend to focus on patients having hysterics and running riot. They don't indict the system but one despotic individual within it (a head nurse); Kesey's narrator claims that she represents a larger controlling force but even then shows that other wards in the hospital are not the same. However, "Cobweb" takes a more subtle nobody's-fault approach that ultimately has wider, darker implications. It implies that these pitfalls are endemic to the system because they are part of human nature, which is a more sinister idea (especially for the 50s) than being able to blame a convenient mini-Hitler. Therefore, it works more convincingly as a microcosm of a society that thinks it's healthy. It's also more salutary and hopeful than those films because it proceeds from this clear-eyed cautionary assessment.

In the true sense of "melodrama," it underlines apparently innocuous early scenes with heavy foreboding music by Leonard Rosenman. It's also astonishing to watch Lillian Gish play a b----. And she does a great job.