Psyche 59

Allison Crawford (Patricia Neal) is a happy mother of two. She is blind. She lost her memory of the incident and the blindness may be all in her head. Her husband Eric Crawford (Curd Jürgens) seems supportive. Her younger sister Robin (Samantha Eggar) comes for a visit.

I like the opening premise. I really like Robin flirting with Eric right in front of Allison. I wouldn't mind them stuck together and cook like a simmering stew. Instead, they get split up and that energy dissipates. Patricia Neal tries. Samantha Eggar does her sex kitten best. Curd Jürgens gets pairs up with a dud. The nice simmering stew becomes a boring mess as the filmmaker keeps stirring and adding poor ingredients. By the time they reunite with a couple of other characters, the movie has lost the intensity and it could not regain it.

"Psyche '59" opened at an art theatre in New York City in 1964. Receiving lukewarm reviews, it closed quickly, and was then used as a co-feature in neighborhood theatres. I consider it a near-masterpiece. Starring Patricia Neal, Curt Jurgens, and Samantha Eggar, it is a spellbinding study of a woman suffering from hysterical blindness, her sex addict husband, and her younger sister, who it seems was sexually imposed-upon at a young age, and who is both cruelly nymphomaniacal and masochistic as a result. This film was clearly ahead of its time.

The screenplay by Julian Zimet, from a novel by Francoise des Ligneris, is a finely-nuanced piece of work.

Alexander Singer might be considered a great director of films about women's issues, as well as a great director of actresses. Consider his direction of Lola Albright in "A Cold Wind in August" three years before, and his direction of Lana Turner in "Love Has Many Faces" the year following. The fact that all three of these films were failures is clearly the reason why Singer is not widely known ("Love Has" having failed simply because its critics and audiences could not appreciate its deliberately melodramatic style).

The cinematography in "Psyche '59" is outstanding. One shot, in which the camera manages to look upward towards Samantha Eggar, while she is lying on the sand, took my breath away. Within the context of the scene, this use of strange camera angle was intensely effective, and not at all pretentious. Whether it was Singer's idea, or that of cinematographer Walter Lassally, I guess I'll never know.

The only flaw in "Psyche '59" is that the actress in the role of the grandmother seems too young for the part.

Psyche 59 is directed by Alexander Singer and adapted to screenplay by Julian Zimet from the novel written by Francoise des Ligneris. It stars Patricia Neal, Curd Jurgens, Samantha Eggar, Ian Bannen and Beatrix Lehmann. Music is by Kenneth V. Jones and cinematography by Walter Lassally.

Blind Alison Crawford (Neal) lives with her husband Eric (Jurgens) and finds the equilibrium of life upset when her young sister Robin (Eggar) comes to stay. It seems there are secrets to will out, both with Robin and the matter of how Alison came to be blind.

A strange, almost hypnotic type of movie, Psyche 59 aims to be a Freudian thriller but just misses the mark of being great. The set up is intriguing, the twists risqué and the photography suitably moody. Neal gives a fine performance as the afflicted Alison, both physically and emotionally, Eggar is super sultry and raises the temperatures considerably, while both Bannen and Jurgens are fine considering the former is under written and the latter gets a character arc that's a bit of a stretch. Unfortunately the pay off is hopelessly weak, the whole build up holds the attention, you sense we are heading for great dramatic denouement, but sadly that's not the case and it leaves a disappointing taste in the mouth. 6/10

I am admittedly biased after seeing her in "The Subject Was Roses", an incredible achievement by Patricia Neal. That being said, this film "Psyche 59" deals with Neal and her seemingly caring husband Curd Jurgens (always believable as middle-aged man, malcontent).

The story starts with Neal in her comfortable London town home, where she is blind due to a tragic accident five years earlier. Her sister Robin (Samantha Eggar) comes to stay with her, which for some reason annoys Jergens. We see the reason clearly as the film unwraps, Eggar's personality as she flirts with her sister's husband. It is rather hard to believe the storyline here that Robin (Eggar) is 17 in this film, as she looks to be about 30 in real life, and manner.

If you can suspend the disbelief a bit (Eggar becomes shrill and annoying at the end, attempting to gain attention from Curt Jurgens).

They stay at the grandmother's country estate for a beach vacation, and the grandmother is , as another reviewer mentioned, rather an extraneous character and its puzzling as to why she has been included in the film, even.

Overall though while the story moves slowly at some points, keep watching for Patricia Neal. She saves the storyline and makes the film well worth your time. Recommended.

Obviously based on a novel (and on a novel by a woman too). I saw this film on TV forty years ago and remembered only the menacing conversation the heroine has with her mother, but that was sufficient to make me want to take another look at it again.

Having enjoyed enormous critical acclaim a couple of years earlier with 'A Cold Wind in August', Alexander Singer blew all the clout he'd gained with that freak success in this elaborate, breaktakingly pretentious folly about the love lives of the fabulously wealthy; and found himself condemned to spend the rest of his career in television. But 'Psyche 59' has awarded him the last laugh, it exists.

A weird hybrid of 'The Miracle Worker' and 'The Pumpkin Eater' (both of which ironically starred Anne Bancroft, who replaced Patricia Neal when she nearly died following a series of debilitating strokes while filming '7 Women' in 1965, barely a year after she'd won an Oscar for 'Hud'). Had Ms Neal died this film would probably be better remembered today, and it would certainly make it an even more vivid experience to watch than it already is. She wears a succession of fabulous outfits devised by Julie Harris plus a pair of those chic sunglasses that blind people always do in the movies, the photography by Walter Lassally is stunning, and the restless score by Kenneth V. Jones creates a similar mood to that his music lent soon afterwards to Roger Corman's 'The Tomb of Ligeia'.

Definitely a film to be watched at least once.