The Cobweb (1955)

User Rating:

6.4/10   

Director:

Vincente Minnelli

Writers:

William Gibson (novel) (additional dialogue)
John Paxton (writer)

Release Date:

7 June 1955 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

At an exclusive psychiatric clinic, the doctors and staff are about as crazy as the patients. The clinic head...

Plot Keywords:

Clinic | Psychiatric Hospital | Beautiful Woman | Psychiatry | Power Abuse

Cast

Richard Widmark	...	Dr. Stewart 'Mac' McIver
Lauren Bacall	...	Meg Faversen Rinehart
Charles Boyer	...	Dr. Douglas N. Devanal
Gloria Grahame	...	Karen McIver
Lillian Gish	...	Victoria Inch
John Kerr	...	Steven W. Holte
Susan Strasberg	...	Sue Brett
Oscar Levant	...	Mr. Capp
Tommy Rettig	...	Mark McIver
Paul Stewart	...	Dr. Otto Wolff
Jarma Lewis	...	Lois Y. Demuth
Adele Jergens	...	Miss Cobb
Edgar Stehli	...	Mr. Holcomb
Sandy Descher	...	Rosemary McIver
Bert Freed	...	Abe Irwin

Runtime:

134 min | USA:123 min (TCM print)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.55 : 1

Sound Mix:

4-Track Stereo (Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

Australia:PG | West Germany:16 (f) | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

Marks the return of Lillian Gish to MGM after a 22 year absence from MGM studios.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Stewart makes warm milk for Steve by heating chilled milk direct from refrigerator on stove for less than 20 seconds in on-screen real time.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Karen McIver: Can I give you a ride?

Movie Connections:

Featured in Point Blank (1967)

100% soap; William Gibson drama has library drapes-envy

Confounding melodrama taken from a William Gibson story, produced by John Houseman and directed by Vincente Minnelli! Richard Widmark heads up posh, upscale rural nervous asylum, where his loose wife battles with self-appointed queen bee Lillian Gish, and Widmark himself gets the straying eye for staff-newcomer Lauren Bacall, who is putting her life back together after the death of her husband and child. Facetious and muddled, set in an indiscriminate time and place, and with a "David and Lisa" love story hidden in the plush morass. Widmark and Bacall do have some good chemistry together, but this script gives them nothing to build on. For precisely an hour, most of the dialogue concerns what to do about the drapes hanging in the library (this thread isn't used as symbolism, rather it's a red herring in a non-mystery!). The picture hopes to show the loggerheads that disparate people come to when they're working in the same profession and everyone thinks their opinion is right, but unfortunately the roundabout way Minnelli unravels this stew is neither informative, enlightening nor entertaining. ** from ****