REVIEW: The Snake Pit
Academy Award winner Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit (1948)
In Anatole Litvak’s psychological drama The Snake Pit, Virginia (Olivia de Havilland) is a writer who suffers a mental health crisis and is effectively imprisoned in an asylum until she’s “cured.” “Cured” meaning she can resume what was then seen as a woman’s “proper role” as a wife and potential mother— at least that’s how some critics have interpreted her journey over the years. Regardless, contemporary audiences experienced a shock when they first saw the movie in late 1948, due to its blunt portrayal of the inhumane conditions many patients were exposed to in mental hospitals at the time. It earned six nominations at the 21st Academy Awards, among them Best Actress for de Havilland, Best Director for Litvak and Best Picture, but it only won Best Sound Recording.
Director Litvak, a Soviet expatriate since 1925, became fascinated by psychiatric treatment while serving in the U.S. Army during WWII, where he often encountered soldiers suffering from what we would now call PTSD. When he came across a book by an author named Mary Jane Ward— that was based on her own struggles with mental illness— he took it to 20th Century Fox co-founder Darryl F. Zanuck to produce. By then, Olivia de Havilland was one of the brightest stars in town. She had won an Oscar in 1946 for To Each His Own and achieved victory in a historic 1943 legal battle that freed her from a restrictive contract with Warner Bros. Her preference for unique, complex characters drew her to Litvak’s project, and she embarked on a period of intensive research once she was hired.
Alongside the director and the rest of the cast (Mark Stevens, Celeste Holm…), de Havilland observed how the mentally ill were really cared for first hand. She visited hospitals, conducted interviews and even sat in on therapy sessions when permitted. With its release, The Snake Pit further confirmed what her fans and Hollywood insiders already knew: de Havilland possessed unrivaled talent. She did not win the Best Actress award she was nominated for in 1949— but she did win it for The Heiress in 1950. Anatole Litvak’s prestige grew considerably as well, the film had netted an impressive $10 million on it’s $3.8 million budget. His next film, Decision Before Dawn, about German prisoners of war, was also nominated for Best Picture in 1952.
Certainly a product of its time, The Snake Pit reinforces messaging about the status of women in the postwar decade while also nobly advocating for mental patients, a downtrodden social class too-often willfully forgotten by the general public. Claims have been made that over half of the U.S. enacted state-wide mental health reforms as a direct result of the movie. This is likely an exaggerated figure, but historians do seem to agree that the film at least generated substantial awareness and certainly assisted in building the momentum necessary for the improvement of heath care in its time.