She's best remembered for providing the perfect contrast to Errol Flynn, the capital "L" lady with the naughty streak who so mirrored his gentleman-rogue act. Such was their chemistry that, like colleague Ginger Rogers, whose name, too, is synonymous with that of a counterpart, it continues to eclipse her more layered performances: 1949's The Heiress, and even better, the previous year's The Snake Pit.
Olivia de Havilland is 90 now, and The Snake Pit more than half that. And yet the film, though naturally dated, lives on quietly as a Hollywood watershed, as does Miss de Havilland's performance.
The Snake Pit is one in a series of Twentieth Century Fox's 'social conscience' films, a line it developed starting in the war years with John Ford's Grapes Of Wrath which continued until the decade's climax, with entries such as Gentlemen's Agreement. These films helped to pave the way for a veritable revolution in American mainstream cinema, with an emphasis on more relevant themes and a more realistic acting style. No Wrath/Snake Pit, no Kazan/Brando.
The Snake Pit bears another interesting distinction: that of rare species. It was a woman's picture which, back in the day, resonated deeply with men. Its heroine, a traumatized suburbanite trying desperately to reconcile her scarring experiences, was very much the life story of a many a returning veteran - no doubt a major factor in studio head Daryl Zanuck's greenlighting of this otherwise too-dark-for-the-box-office project.
The reason closest to his heart, however, may have been the conscientious Zanuck's opportunity to comment on a societal ill - in this instance, the mistreatment of the psychologically disturbed, a theme not to resurface so successfully until 1975's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. In The Snake Pit, Miss de Havilland and her fellow inmates are the prisoners of a kabala of placid pipe-smokers, whose idea of humane treatment is electroshock therapy; minimalist as the scenes of this crude practice are, they remain harrowing and memorable.
But the film's greatest distinction is Miss de Havilland's performance. Her turn in The Snake Pit is a perfect measurement of the state of American film acting at that time, the imminently recognizable middle rung on a ladder that starts with the posing of The Glamour Era and climaxes with the Stanislavskian internalists.
In some scenes, she is still relying heavily upon the pretty-young-thing shtick that first got her noticed. In others, particularly in the many close-ups of her necessitated by the film's Voice Over, we are witnessing the birth of the screen's first truly modern actress.
It was without question the most demanding role of her career; she never again suggested anything close to the psychosis on display here, even when, rare as the opportunity was, she was asked to (see 1965's Hush. Hush, Sweet Charlotte.)
One of the greatest female screen performances of all time? Maybe. Without question, though, one of filmdom's most important.
