hyped garbage

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Olivia DeHavilland does a remarkable job in this film about a woman who suffers a nervous breakdown and can no longer function. She is placed in an asylum for the mentally deranged/disturbed. We are allowed inside the asylums of that day and see the day to day care of these patients.The acting is fantastic by everyone. Even the actors that have small parts. The direction great. Some of the dialog is of course dated as we don't talk like this anymore. Now we say "yeah, huh, what was that?" But here is a film that really drags you in to the scene. No mind-numbing CGI or computer graphics. This is gritty, hands on filmmaking. Olivia DeHavilland's facial expressions are perfect in every scene. She makes the best of everything she's given. Don't miss this one.

The Snake Pit The hardest part of diagnosing craziness in women is not accidentally making a blanket assessment of the entire sex.And while this drama doesn't put all women in padded cells, it does confine at least one.Rousing after a hysterical blackout, housewife Virginia (Olivia de Havilland) finds she's been admitted to a mental hospital where she's been diagnosed schizophrenic.Disorientated and frantic, Virginia is unable to remember the events leading up to her residency at the hospital.But overtime, psychotherapy and electric shock therapy help her recount the troublesome marital matters between her and her husband.And with each session she draws closer to escaping the maddening cries of her fellow patients.A pioneering perspective of the medieval practices of a 1940s mental institute, The Snake Pit is an artistic and an educational achievement.However, with free pills, free psychoanalysis and free pajamas, who's ever going to admit they're sane? Green Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.com

This was a disturbing movie to watch even though it seemed to have a happy ending. At the time I first saw the movie in the 1960's, I had a friend who was in a mental ward briefly and the scenes were frightening realistic with the characters portrayal and the prevalence of shock therapy While it is true the ending was over the top with the "Going Home' sequence, the message of hope was uplifting and was counter to the stark hard to watch struggles of daily life in the hospital. How anyone got better at all was a miracle. At least they tried to make sure the discharged patient had someplace to go unlike 'Swing Blade' where Billy Bob Thornton was just sent on his way even though he was potentially violent.

When I was 8 I remember visiting my mother at Pilgrim State Hospital on Long Island. Years later I saw this film and it was if I was back at Pilgrim State. Realistic, frightening, heart-wrenching, poignant and yet, in the end, hopeful. Some others have mentioned the non-Oscar for de Havilland. Yet she did get two for other films in the same era( Streep has only one Oscar for best actress with more than a dozen nominations). Others have mentioned other films about mental illness, yet the one that comes closest to this in terms of realism and total effect, I believe, is Lost Weekend, which won a Best Picture Oscar just a few years earlier.