Bewitched

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.

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.

Prototype Film-Noir from Stylist Arch Oboler who made His Name on the Radio with His Ultra-Popular "Lights Out" Program. Here He Adopts His Own Story "Alter-Ego" and brings it to the Screen for MGM.

This is One of the Few MGM Noirs of the First Wave. It would Take Years before the Haughty Studio would lend its Name Seriously to a Style so Dark.

Phyllis Thaxter gives a Good Performance in a Soul-Baring Role. Steve McNally is Miscast but manages to look Desperate and Edmund Gwenn as the Psychiatrist trying to Exorcise Thaxter's other Personality, the Evil One, is a Good Try.

With its Roots in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the only Reference Point at this Point for Multiple Personalities On Screen, Oboler delivers and Ultra-Stylish Descent into Schizophrenia.

The Film is Guilty of way too Much Verbiage, a Radio Drama influence, but it Balances it with Film Flourishes that are Atmospheric and Stunning.

The Movie Grips the Audience as it tries to Explain and Expose Psychiatric Methods and Procedures. But the Truth is that Not Much was Known at the Time and the Little that was Known was constantly Up for Debate in the Medical Community.

So it was No Easy Task Transferring this to the Movies. For Years Hollywood gave it a go with Extremely Inconsistent Results. It Was a Staple in Film-Noir and the Horror of Val Lewton but Main Stream and "A" Pictures were Reluctant to take it on for quite Some Time.

Overall, this is a Great Early Effort and a Striking Example of Film-Noir and the Psychological Pictures that Started a Run After the War and Never Stopped, and actually becoming a Genre of its own (The Psychological Thriller).

A woman on death row is discovered to have a split personality in "Bewitched," a 1945 film starring Phyllis Thaxter, Edmund Gwenn, and Stephen McNally. Thaxter is a young, soon to be wed woman who has blackouts, walks around at night, and hears voices. She runs away from her parents' home and her husband to be and goes to New York, gets a job, and meets an attorney (McNally) who falls for her. Her fiancé finds her, and, under orders from her other personality (voiced by Audrey Totter), she kills him.

Now we're brought back to death row where Edmund Gwenn suspects her problem and wants to hypnotize her.

Boring film with a good cast nonetheless, psychiatric disorders being a fashionable subject during and after World War II. What made Three Faces of Eve interesting was that the main character was a woman with a dull affect, but her personalities had lots of spark. Just hearing the voice of Totter here isn't enough. If Thaxter had actually been taken over by her alternate personality and, say, lived as her in New York, the film would have been a lot more interesting.

Not very good.

Wholesome gal Phyllis Thaxter lives with her upper-middle-class parents and plans to wed soon. But she's beginning to cause some concern; she's prone to odd fainting spells – blackouts, really – and to wandering the deserted streets of her midwestern city at night. Scant wonder, because living inside her, and clawing to get out, is Audrey Totter! Totter, in fact, gives perhaps the most chilling voice-of-the-demon performance until Mercedes McCambridge gave us Pazuzu in The Exorcist.

Capitalizing on the heightened interest in abnormal psychology spurred by the return of shell-shocked veterans, Bewitched latches onto a tabloid-worthy subject – multiple personality disorder. It's noteworthy in doing so a dozen years before both Lizzie and The Three Faces of Eve, in which, respectively, Eleanor Parker and Joanne Woodward (who nabbed the Oscar) displayed similar symptoms. Footnotes in medical journals probably do not cite any of these movies, so facile is their treatment of a troubling and controversial syndrome.

Thaxter tries a geographical cure, fleeing to New York where she falls in love with a lawyer (Stephen McNally). But when her old fiancé tracks her down, Totter, who apparently wasn't left behind, emerges to kill him with a pair of scissors. Then comes a stylized courtroom fantasy lifted all but intact from Boris Ingster's Stranger On The Third Floor, followed by a real murder trial. Wise old psychiatrist Edmund Gwynne explains everything to us, along with the Governor and his wife, and then proceeds to exorcize Totter (who, by the way, calls herself Karen).

Apart from Thaxter's nocturnal excursion, there's little original or striking about the movie. That we see the good girl but only hear the bad one is a big part of the problem. The extra energy that might have come from seeing Karen in action – for that matter, from casting Totter on-screen – gets thrown away. They picked the wrong personality.