Very disappointing...

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

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

I think one of the most terrifying things that could happen to a person is to be incarcerated in an institution where you have been judged, but you don't have the wherewithal to defend yourself. Olivia De Havilland's character is institutionalized, through her husband's actions, and doesn't know why. As she wades through her memories, she begins to come around. Unfortunately, it takes someone to believe in you to get listened to. Let's face it, the grunt workers here are full of prejudices and suspicions. These are, after all, crazy people. Things get really complicated when De Havilland's character begins to get close to a handsome doctor. She starts to come into her own a bit, loved by her fellow patients, but a woman who is jealous sets things up to get her put into "the snake pit." This is the place where the hopeless go. It sounds a good deal like Dante's circles of hell.

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.

A memorable 1948 film with Olivia DeHavilland giving a N.Y. City film critic winning performance. It would take someone of Jane Wyman's caliber in "Johnny Belinda" to have beaten her out. That was some year for best actress nominees. We also had Barbara Stanwyck, Irene Dunne and Ingrid Bergman for "Sorry Wrong Number," and "I Remember Mama," as well as "Joan of Arc."The film depicts a shocking indictment of our mental hospitals for that period of time.DeHavilland was outstanding here. The various nuances that she showed as a mentally unbalanced person were phenomenal. She got fantastic support from Mark Stevens, her husband in the film as well as Leo Genn, phenomenal as the doctor who understood her.Ruth Donnelly, Beulah Bondi and particularly Betsy Blair were terrific as mentally ill women. Amazing that Celeste Holm, who had won the supporting Oscar the year before for "Gentleman's Agreement," had such a small role in this film.The picture brings out how terrible mental illness can be and the desperation of those trying to get better.As we saw with "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," there are plenty of nurses who should not have been in psychiatric wards.It takes compassion and understanding to unlock the mystery to mental illnesses. The picture aptly did that.