Bewitched

Average yet enteraining story about a young girl being plagued with a voice inside telling her what to do. The girl breaks down and listens to the voice, moving across country leaving her family and fiancée behind to make a new start. The film then has a new man come into the girl's life when old wounds are re-opened and tragedy strikes. While nothing particularly inventive takes place, I rather liked the mood created throughout the film. The film opens with the female protagonist in jail for a crime she didn't yet did commit. Phyllis Thaxter as Joan, the troubled young lady with multiple personalities living inside her, gives a more than competent portrayal of this tortured woman, yet the film's story is rather weak and completely falls apart in the last third when some ridiculous scientific explanation is given for her aberrant behaviour. Edmund Gwenn plays a psychiatrist/family friend and gives the film a bit of credibility with his performance. The rest of the cast is adequate and the film is mildly entertaining. Hypnosis, the gas chamber, and playing with scissors are all explored.

Bewitched (1945)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Joan Alris Ellis (Phyllis Thaxter) is your typical young woman. She's happy, healthy and looking forward to her upcoming marriage but then she begins to hear voices. Soon these voices are taking over her life so she runs away from her fiancé and family hoping to find some peace but soon she murders a man. Was it her or the voices?

BEWITCHED is a pretty interesting film that has a lot of creative moments and it's certainly a film that's ahead of its time. It certainly fits in quite well with the film noir from this era but there are plenty of horror elements and you could really argue that it touched on some similar subjects that Alfred Hitchcock would do fifteen years later in PSYCHO. Sadly, not all of the elements come together as well as they should but there's no question that the film is worth watching.

The best thing working for the film is Arch Oboler's direction because he keeps the film moving at a rather nice pace and he also handles the various elements quite nicely. I thought the psychological aspect of the film was the highlight because there are several scenes where the lead character battles with herself and these are extremely effective. I also thought the noir aspect with the cinematography was good. I think the film loses some of its power during the finale, which I won't spoil but it was a tad bit too sappy for me.

Thaxter is good in the lead and performs both characters very well. Edmund Gwenn, Henry H. Daniels, Jr. and Addison Richards are also good in their parts. BEWITCHED was certainly ahead of its time and deserves a lot of credit for the subject matter.

I'm giving this a seven, because it's cinematically well crafted. I was very interested to see how it would end, given that the Production Code ensured that virtue would be rewarded-- so would the Code let anyone get away with murder?

The film's theme of split personality suffers from a profound ignorance of that disorder's mechanics, and confuses it with certain forms of schizophrenia, an error still common today. Schizophrenia is a psychosis, a mental illness treatable with medication, while Multiple Personality Disorder, now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder, is an acquired condition usually formed as a survival mechanism after unbearable trauma. In Bewitched it manifests more like demonic possession.

Dissociative Identity was first identified in the 1880s, but was still largely a mystery to many people. The idea of split personality readily leant itself to dramatic portrayal, especially onscreen, and this served to familiarize more of the general public with the condition. There was Blanche Sweet in "The Case of Becky" (1915) from the stage success by that name, remade in 1918 as "The Two-Soul Woman" with Priscilla Dean. Still to come were Constance Binney in a remake of "The Case of Becky" in 1921, followed by Gladys Walton in "The Untameable" (1923). Barbara La Marr took on a new treatment of the theme in "Sandra" (1924). More familiar today would of course be 1957's "The Three Faces of Eve" and later titles.

I couldn't help wondering why the poor girl never mentioned hearing that nasty voice in her head. Of course she didn't want people thinking she was CRAZY, so she just went on acting really disturbed, which had to suggest that she was-- well, DISTURBED.

The story makes no sense in psychological terms, so it's best not to worry about its half-baked medical aspects. Just figure that this nice girl somehow picked up a demon who wanted to take over. The demon 'Karen' is a vicious maneating floosy, itching to be set loose upon the world, and giving her Audrey Totter's voice makes her truly scary. If Karen ever got more than a few moments in control, woe to us all!

This is a bold film for its time because it tackles mental illness head on - in this case multiple personality syndrome. Thaxter is quite good as the sweet young girl occasionally taken over by the evil Karin (voiced brilliantly by Audrey Totter). Unfortunately the director takes it all far too seriously, and his constant cut-aways to grim or shocked reaction shots becomes comical. You really feel for the actors. Thank God for the wonderful Edmund Gwenn, who is the only actor who makes the material almost believable. And what a great psychiatrist he is - he can cure multiple personality syndrome in a matter of seconds, just by talking sternly to the evil side! Some nice visual moments and the uniqueness of the material make this film worth a look.

Or, if you prefer, Mrs. Jekyll & Hyde without the serum. Many offbeat, inventive touches in this eerie, unusual (for its time) paranormal thriller (including what must be the only close-up of new paper being inserted into a typewriter I've ever seen in a movie) ; not entirely successful (for one thing, we don't see enough of the "wild" Karen), but a most worthy effort. **1/2 out of 4.