The Cobweb *** (1955, Richard Widmark, Lauren Bacall, Charles Boyer, Lillian Gish, Gloria Grahame, John Kerr, Susan Strasberg, Oscar Levant, Tommy Rettig, Paul Stewart) – Classic Movie Review 6310

Director Vincente Minnelli’s 1955 high-class soap opera from clever people who should have known better is campy and amusingly overheated. The Cobweb is set in an exclusive psychiatric clinic, where the patients clash with the doctors and staff, with much ado about the nothing of buying some new drapes (curtains) for the institution.

An uncomfortable and miscast Richard Widmark is scarcely at his best as the clinic’s boss, Doctor Stewart ‘Mac’ McIver. However, Charles Boyer, Lillian Gish and Paul Stewart as staffers Doctor Douglas Devanal, Miss Victoria Inch (business manager) and Doctor Otto Wolff, Oscar Levant as patient Mr Capp, and Gloria Grahame as Doctor ‘Mac”s unfaithful wife Karen McIver all are much more entertaining.

It is entertaining to see these special players battle so valiantly against such a cobwebby screenplay by John Paxton that reeks of the warmed-over stale steam from its reheating. It is based on a novel by William Gibson, who also provides additional dialogue, so maybe he is the man to blame. However, back to the drapes. It is the movie’s one original idea.

I kid you not, there really is much ado about drapes with Doctor ‘Mac’ getting the patients to design and make new drapes for the clinic library as therapy, while his wife Karen orders new drapes, and so does Miss Inch! This is a unique plot, and it is easy to see why no one else has tried it as an idea. Too many drapes, your majesty!

The film represents a rare fall from excellence by producer John Houseman and director Minnelli, completely missing the target of quality film they were aiming at. But nevertheless, it is hugely entertaining as campy and amusingly overheated high-class soap opera. It is nearly a so-bad-it’s-good type movie.

It is the first movie for both John Kerr (as Steven Holte) and Susan Strasberg, aged 16 (as Sue Brett). Also in the cast are Tommy Rettig, Adele Jergens, Bert Freed, Sandra Drescher, Mabel Alberston, Fay Wray, Oliver Blake, Olive Carey and Virginia Christine.

The Cobweb is shot in CinemaScope and Eastmancolor by George J Folsey and scored by Leonard Rosenman, with Art Direction by E Preston Ames and Cedric Gibbons.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6310

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