While the recognition of diseases of the mind dates back to ancient Greece, it wasn’t until the 19th century that both psychology and psychiatry began to emerge as scientific fields.
It’s easy to look back and find films from the early 20th century jarring for many reasons. Modern audiences revisiting these films will find some portrayals to be highly fictionalized and even offensive. But it is important to remember that early films were a reflection of a society that still lacked the diagnostic insight, vocabulary, and empathy to convey mental illness as more than a series of erratic behaviors or evidence of moral failing. And yet this is exactly why, with the benefit of hindsight, it is particularly compelling to uncover performances that stand out as authentic now.
As with sexuality, the films of the classic era relied on subtext to convey dramatic (and sometimes comedic) implications to the audience. Some illnesses were favored by writers of specific genres to sustain engrossing plots and characters. After all, what gangster film, screwball comedy, psychological thriller, or film noir doesn’t have characters with pathological behaviors?
As depictions of mental illness continued over decades of the cinema, psychiatric drugs, and mental health reform began to gain momentum, influencing public attitudes and evolving the acceptable treatments of various conditions worldwide. Beginning after World War II and over time as the industry’s self-censorship began to lose its potency in the face of television and the breakdown of the studio system, filmmakers could also be bolder in adapting challenging source material and tackling darker themes.
Few films demonstrate this symbiotic relationship of film influencing the study of mental health as spectacularly as Gaslight. First a play in 1938, then a film in the UK in 1940, and then a film by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1944, the term “gaslighting” entered the lexicon of pop psychology permanently in the mid-2010s. In 2022, it was the Word of the Year.
As we celebrate Mental Health Awareness Month this May, an observance established in 1949, consider delving back in time as a way of appreciating how far we’ve come, and honoring those who devoted their lives to our progress.
Riptide (1934)
- Stars: Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery, Herbert Marshall
- Director: Edmund Goulding
- Writers: Edmund Goulding, Zoe Akins, Edith Fitzgerald
Manic Depression (now Bipolar Disorder)
Referred to by other characters as “beautifully batty,” “quite mad,” and as frequently alternating between bouts of highly social to depressed and reclusive states, Robert Montgomery’s character is romantic, impulsive, and self-destructive.
Here I was contemplating a nice juicy suicide, everything getting darker and darker, when you blow in with a lot of trumpets full of electricity and promise and wooahh - up on top of the world again.
These Three (1936)
- Stars: Miriam Hopkins, Merle Oberon, Joel McCrea
- Director: William Wyler
- Writer: Lillian Hellman
Sociopathy (Antisocial Personality Disorder)
Bonita Granville received an Oscar nomination for her performance at age 12 of a schoolgirl who tells a "malicious" lie in this adaption of The Children's Hour. The embodiment of destructive gossip, she is single-minded and vitriolic in her pursuit of destroying the reputations of two school teachers, bullying and threatening anyone else in her way.
Read our review of These Three
The Lost Weekend (1945)
- Stars: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry
- Director: Billy Wilder
- Writers: Charles R. Jackson, Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder
Alcohol Addiction (Substance Use Disorder)
Though preview audiences had mixed and overwhelmingly negative things to say, and according to Billy Wilder the liquor industry offered Paramount Pictures a $5 million bribe not the release it, The Lost Weekend went on to win four Oscars including Best Picture and Best Actor (Ray Milland), critical acclaim, and is often cited as one of the earliest, thoroughly honest depictions of alcoholism.
That's when you need it most - in the morning. Haven't you learned that yet? At night this stuff's a drink. In the morning, it's medicine.
Read our review of The Lost Weekend
The Seventh Veil (1945)
- Stars: James Mason, Ann Todd, Herbert Lom
- Director: Compton Bennett
- Writers: Muriel Box, Sydney Box
Amnesia (Dissociative Disorder), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
While amnesia was a common plot device used in films, in this UK release, a suicidal Ann Todd undergoes hypnosis at the encouragement of her psychiatrist. By peeling back the veils to her subconscious, she struggles to regain access to memories she suppressed during emotional abuse.
Salome drops her seventh veil of her own free will, but you will never get the human mind to do that, and that is why I use narcosis. Five minutes under narcosis and down comes the seventh veil. Then we can see what is actually going on behind it. Then we can really help.
The Locket (1946)
- Stars: Laraine Day, Robert Mitchum, Brian Aherne
- Director: John Brahm
- Writers: Sheridan Gibney, Norma Barzman
Kleptomania (Impulse Control Disorder)
Laraine Day's character ruins the lives of several men due to her lifelong obsession with social position and a single piece of jewelry. Tales of murder, suicide, and multiple commitments to mental institutions (one as an act of duplicity and the other as compassion) are told through layers of flashbacks.
High Wall (1947)
- Stars: Robert Taylor, Audrey Totter, Herbert Marshall
- Director: Curtis Bernhardt
- Writers: Sydney Boehm, Lester Cole, Alan R. Clark
Amnesia (Dissociative Disorder), Psychiatric Institutionalization
Similar to Spellbound (1945), this is an in-patient take on the amnesia of a World War II veteran (Robert Taylor) which also focuses on the facility, doctors (including Audrey Totter), and treatments. Memory retrieval is attempted via narcosynthesis (sodium pentothal), a treatment common in post-war America, and the science behind the often fictionalized “truth serum.”
The Snake Pit (1948)
- Stars: Olivia de Havilland, Mark Stevens, Leo Genn
- Director: Anatole Litvak
- Writers: Frank Partos, Millen Brand, Mary Jane Ward
Schizophrenia, Psychiatric Institutionalization
This landmark film follows a schizophrenic (Olivia de Havilland) acclimating to life within a mental institution, complete with electro-shock therapy, narcosynthesis, straight jackets, padded cells, and adversarial nurses. After its release, many states changed their mental health laws and its influence led to more funding for the National Institute of Mental Health.
I remembered once reading in a book that long ago they used to put insane people into pits full of snakes. I think they figured that something which might drive a normal person insane, might shock an insane person back into sanity.
Read our review of The Snake Pit
Lizzie (1957)
- Stars: Eleanor Parker, Richard Boone, Joan Blondell
- Director: Hugo Haas
- Writers: Mel Dinelli, Shirley Jackson
Multiple Personality Disorder (now Dissociative Identity Disorder)
Released almost six months before The Three Faces of Eve (1957) for which Joanne Woodward would win an Oscar for Best Actress, Lizzie features another fine performance. Eleanor Parker is a shy museum professional who appears to be suffering from headaches and exhaustion, but is in fact contending with three distinct personalities.
Home Before Dark (1958)
- Stars: Jean Simmons, Dan O'Herlihy, Rhonda Fleming
- Director: Mervyn LeRoy
- Writers: Eileen Bassing, Robert Bassing
Depression, Psychiatric Institutionalization
A woman (Jean Simmons) returns home after a year-long stay at a sanitarium, but her readjustment and recovery is jeopardized by the same dysfunctional family dynamic and toxic environment that led to her breakdown.
Night of the Iguana (1964)
- Stars: Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr
- Director: John Huston
- Writers: Tennessee Williams, Anthony Veiller, John Huston
Panic Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Depression
After interrupting his own sermon to chase his parishioners out of the church, a defrocked priest descends further into emotional desperation in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. There he is inspired and supported by a woman (Deborah Kerr) who speaks candidly of her own battles with fear and depression, which she refers to as The Blue Devil.
The fantastic level and the realistic level are the two levels upon which we live. But which is the real one really? … When you live on the fantastic level, as I have more and more lately, but have to operate on the realistic level - that's when you get spooked. And I, am spooked.
Other film classic film recommendations that depict mental illness: M (1938), Possessed (1947), Harvey (1950), The Caine Mutiny (1954), Compulsion (1959).
Explore this gallery for a few more of the many examples of how classic films alluded to mental illness.
