Wow! Such a good movie.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Possessed is directed by Curtis Bernhardt and adapted to screenplay by Silvia Richards and Ranald MacDougall from a story by Rita Weiman. It stars Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, Raynond Massey and Geraldine Brooks. Music is by Franz Waxman and cinematography by Joseph Valentine.After wandering around the streets of Los Angeles in a daze, Louise Howell (Crawford) collapses in a diner and admitted to hospital. From there, prompted under medication, she begins to reveal a rather sad story...Film begins with quite a kick, a dazed looking Crawford, stripped of make-up, wanders around a ghostly looking Los Angeles uttering the name David. Once she enters the hospital, we switch to flashback mode and the makers unfurl a noir tale of mental illness, oneirism, hopeless love and death. German director Bernhardt (Conflict/High Wall) and his cinematographer Valentine (Shadow of a Doubt/Sleep, My Love) deal in expressionistic methods to enhance the story. Light and shadows often marry up to Louise's fractured state of mind, motif association flits in and out of the plotting and there's some striking imagery used; such as a body dragged from a lake and Louise framed in a rain speckled window.The lines of reality are impressively blurred, ensuring the viewers remain in a state of not ever being sure of what is real. There's a deft disorientation about the production, where fatalism looms large and sadness is all too evident in our troubled femme protagonist. Principal cast performances are of a high standard, with Crawford (Academy Award Nominated) leading the way with one of those wide eyed turns that perfectly treads the thin line between fraught and tender. While laid over the top is a score from Waxman that emphasises the key segments of poor Louise's mental disintegration. But what of the story in itself? The rhyme or reason for such murky melodramatics dressed up neatly in noir clobber?Story is pretty much wrapped around the notion that a romantic obsession sends Louise Howell on the downward spiral. Since we know next to nothing about the relationship between Louise and David Sutton (Heflin), or why Sutton is the sly and antagonistic way he is, it's a big hole in character formation. As is the death of Dean Graham's (Massey) wife, or in fact the sudden shift of Dean Graham becoming husband to one Louise Howell. The film looks terrific on a noir level, and Crawford engrosses greatly from start to finish, but it only seems to exist for these two reasons, all else is on the outer edges of the frame looking in. A shame because there is much to like and be involved with here. 7.5/10

No need for the typical make-up man or costuming maven to glamorize Joan in her role here. As Louise, care-giver to a jealous wife, she's looking either haggard or near-bonkers the whole way through. I guess our legendary diva got the career change-of-pace she was looking for, in spades. Check out her first scene with professional cad David (Heflin). It's a little gem of 40's innuendo—for him it's been a casual affair that he's now trying to ease out of. For her, it's now a consuming passion she can't let go of. And so the stage for 100-minutes of neurotic high drama is set. Director Bernhardt certainly knows how to frame the emotionally troubled with noirish photography that heightens Louise's dark mental state. Frankly, I could have done without a lot of the clinical mumbo-jumbo, but then the whole topic was rather new to the American screen, so I guess the producers wanted to reassure audiences that science had a handle on it.To me, Heflin steals the film in a very un-Heflin type role. As a slick womanizer, he's very sly about revealing his egotism, which only accumulates by degrees that sets up the eventual showdown with Louise. Speaking of casting against type, the usually imperious Massey manages his low-key role as an understanding husband better than I would have expected.All in all, it's a Crawford showcase, but a histrionic wringer she evidently didn't want to repeat, and didn't. It's certainly a long way from her usual glamorous man-eating roles. As entertainment, the movie's just okay, being unconvincing at times and slow-going until the climax.

A woman wonders through the streets of Los Angeles seeking out a man named David. She goes to a diner and the clients call an ambulance that takes her to a hospital. She is sent to the psychiatric wing with catatonic stupor and Dr. Willard (Stanley Ridges) diagnosis that she has nervous disorder and injects some medicine to calm her down.She tells that she is a nurse named Louise Howell (Joan Crawford) that takes care of a paranoid woman named Pauline Graham in the family house in an island. Louise falls in an unrequited love with their neighbor, the construction engineer David Sutton (Van Heflin). When David ends their love affair, Louise becomes obsessed for him and David finds a job position in Canada with Louise's master Dean Graham (Raymond Massey).Sooner Pauline dies in an accident and the Graham family moves to Washington. Louise is hired as a tutor of Dean's young son Wynn, and his teenage daughter Carol Graham (Geraldine Brooks) blames Louise for the death of her mother. Later Dean proposes to marry Louise and Carol accepts her as stepmother. When David returns from Canada, Carol is a beautiful wealthy young woman and the opportunist David decides to marry Carol for money. Meanwhile, Louise has a deterioration of her mental state and is schizophrenic; when she learns that David will marry Carol, she takes and ultimate decision."Possessed" is an engaging and melodramatic film-noir where the lead character gets insane and obsessed for an unrequited love for a construction engineer. Joan Crawford has an awesome performance and in the beginning of the story she is totally deglamourized dressed like an ordinary woman. There are two minor flaws in the plot since her relationship with David is never seen while there are too much explanation about her madness process and I am not sure whether they follow a scientifically supported or not. My vote is eight. Title (Brazil): "Fogueira de Paixão" ("Bonfire of Passion")

Psychologically disturbed, Joan Crawford (as Louise Howell) is found wandering the streets of Los Angeles. "David," she mutters, "I'm looking for David." Awakening in an asylum, Ms. Crawford unravels her story… In flashback, we meet Crawford as a relatively level-headed Washington nurse; in a rustic northwestern estate, she cares for the mentally unbalanced wife of wealthy Raymond Massey (as Dean Graham). Mr. Massey's wife thinks Crawford is having an affair with her husband, but Crawford is really seeing World War II veteran Van Heflin (as David Sutton). Crawford loves Heflin so bad it hurts, but he isn't interested in commitment. Heflin tells her, "I can't love you the way you love me." Crawford says she'll wait forever, but Heflin says never.Heflin's rejection distresses Crawford. Then, Massey's wife drowns. And, faced with losing both her lover and livelihood, Crawford accepts Massey's marriage proposal. But, Crawford is still "Possessed" by her love for Heflin. He returns to romance step-daughter Geraldine Brooks (as Carol), who thinks Crawford killed her mother to marry Massey… The melodramatic plot continues, and remains fascinating throughout. This is mid-period Crawford at her very best. Superb in a tailor-made production, Crawford stands head and shoulders above the rest of the 1947 "Academy Award" nominees for "Best Actress" of 1947. Director Curtis Bernhardt and photographer Joseph Valentine match Germanic-inspired "film noir" with their star in stylish black and white.********* Possessed (7/26/47) Curtis Bernhardt ~ Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, Raymond Massey, Geraldine Brooks