Distributor: Warner Archive
Release Date: October 21, 2014
MSRP: $21.99
Order at Warner Archive

Film: B+ / Video: B+ / Audio: B / Extras: C-

Joan Crawford may have been one of the few above-the-line stars to actively typecast herself, pursuing roles she knew existed in her range, roles only she could play. Her roles of the 1940s center on uncertain, longing women whose romantic aspirations are thwarted by various means. In Daisy Kenyon, it is the competition of her lovers, which quickly comes to perpetuate itself on its own strength of masculine superiority and views her eponymous adwoman almost as an afterthought. In Possessed, Crawford’s Louise enters the frame already mad from her obsessive desire, roaming Los Angeles with unkempt hair and no make-up, calling for her “David.” The rest of the film unfurls in flashbacks from a hospital bed, but well before the film gets to Louise’s backstory, it’s obvious that it contains nothing good.

The flashbacks cut to the quick in illustrating Louise’s desire for David (Van Heflin), the neighbor of the couple for whom she cares. In the first interaction we see between Louise and David, Crawford behaves like a woman trying her best to adopt a carefree, affable attitude before this thin veneer collapses and Louise confesses her desperate love. Crawford uses her distinct, exaggerated features to full effect in her scenes with Heflin, bulging out her eyes and puffing out her prominent lips as Louise hysterically reiterates her feelings to David, who understandably recoils from the force of her fixation. Sometimes he lets her down gently, while other times he flatly makes a break for it; in one grimly funny scene, he even leaps into a boat and speeds away.

Director Curtis Bernhardt uses the film’s framing device to root the tone between clinical re-enactment and in-the-moment emotion. Expressionistic lighting and densely decorated frames give even more voice to the demented, thwarted attraction that pervades the film, not only the sort Louise feels for David but that Dean (Raymond Massey), whose wife dies under mysterious circumstances under Louise’s care, feels for Louise. But the bursts of emotion are filtered through a detached lens, so when Dean’s invalid wife turns up, or Louise starts to hallucinate hearing the woman’s ghost, these outlandish moments are instantly juxtaposed by legal and medical talk that reduces them to dry explanations (and justifications). The blur between simple documentation and subjective remembrance intentionally muddles the atmosphere, and it subtly corrupts even the scenes of relative normalcy.

Crawford matches this aesthetic decision with her performance. Her affected laughs and fast-talking mania are pure camp, but they’re laced with moments of terrifying calm that reveal Louise using moments of lucidity only to fully plot out her next bout of madness. Louise faces several revelations in the film—Dean’s feelings for her, as well as the suspicion and resentment of Dean’s daughter Carol (Geraldine Brooks)—but the most destabilizing is seeing David for what he really is, a cynical and manipulative creep unworthy of her attention, much less devotion. The pressure of this realization rubbing against her obsession is too much to bear, and it overwhelms the picture in its heated final passages. Possessed fits squarely within noir conventions, but it’s especially troubling for illuminating a rot of the individual soul as much as its peers illustrate a poisoned system.

A/V

Possessed looks strong on Warner’s Blu-ray. Black and white contrast is stable, while the thick grain preserves the film look while also betraying a lack of the same restorative quality of the Archive’s other recent hi-def triumphs. Nonetheless, numerous scratches and other damage have been cleaned, and the mono track is similarly solid. There are no pops or muted passages in the audio, which is instead bold, even cacophonous, in its clarity.

Extras

USC professor Drew Casper provides a commentary track, though if the common problem of academic commentaries is their dry tone and pile-up of detail, Casper’s track, down to the falsely ingratiating lilt in his voice, sounds like a Film 101 professor explaining simple concepts to a class he assumes has never heard of them before. Over and over, he belabors the same basic observations of the film as an anti-star vehicle, or of textbook definitions of noir aesthetics, rarely venturing beyond to offer any real insight. The disc also comes with a brief featurette on the film featuring interviews with more eloquent, interesting speakers (Casper pops up to define “noir” as “black”), as well as a theatrical trailer.

Overall

One of the best Joan Crawford showcases gets a great transfer from Warner Archive, though the extras leave something to be desired.