The other day I was watching an old British TV interview of Joan Crawford on YouTube (as one does) when they showed a clip of the climax of the 1947 Crawford starrer
Possessed. As Joan screamed out her lover's name over and over I remembered how much I love this performance. After a bottle of Chardonnay in the tub, I re-watched this classic and re-confirmed that Joan Crawford was not just a bitch in an Adrian gown. This woman could act.
Possessed (not to be confused with the 1931 Joan Crawford/Clark Gable film of the same name) was part of Joan's Warner Brothers renaissance. Following up her Oscar-winning turn in
Mildred Pierce (1945) and the equally moving role of doomed socialite Helen Wright in
Humoresque (1946), Crawford grabbed the part of mentally broken nurse Louise Howell with both gloved hands.
Possessed opens with a stricken Crawford aimlessly wandering the streets sans makeup and finery, calling out for a man named David. The mixture of Perc Westmore's non-makeup makeup and Crawford's vacant stare are a striking opening for the picture- and an uncharacteristic view of Crawford totally stripped of her glamour armor. I mean, she's not even wearing her signature fuck-me pumps!
The ensuing psychotropic drug flashback is a mixture of romantic melodrama and Female Gothic with Louise slowly losing her mind over the love of a man who doesn't want her (the ever-charming Van Heflin) and the new stepdaughter (Geraldine Brooks) he does want. Crawford is at her acting peak- balancing vulnerability and a hard edge as she descends into madness. One minute sweating and shaking as she tries to separate reality from hallucination, and the next slapping her step-daughter down a flight of stairs.
Crawford went to sanitariums and met with mental patients to try and give her performance an air of reality, making Louise more than just a crazed ex-lover who is one donut short of a dozen. And it works. The Crawford image is dulled and then re-shined and then torn apart, in a way, stripping this actress down into the disparate elements that made her such an interesting film star.
Crawford earned her second Oscar nom, but the rest of her stay at Warner Brothers would result in more soap-y fare like the deliciously slap-happy
Flamingo Road (1949) and Crawford's least favorite movie
This Woman is Dangerous (1952). Possessed is sort of a perfect middle-point for Crawford the actress- between her successful studio career, and the darker victim films she would make after the studio system lost its grip.
