Saw The Cobweb (1955), an incredibly frothy film which actually and seriously revolves around an argument about library drape patterns. The film is set in one of those spa-like mental hospitals that the Reagan administration killed off, where patients and staff live together in a big mansion with a flock of nurses. The chief protagonist is the new head doctor who is trying to let the patients self-govern themselves a bit. There's also an art therapy lady, the doctor's wife, a hysterical but kinda attractive artist patient (John Kerr), and Lillian Gish as the terrifying and formidable head matron. The head doctor wants to let the artist guy design the drapes, Lillian Gish wants to buy the cheapest drapes possible to mollify the board of trustees, the doctor's wife wants to use some drapes one of her friends once showed her. This is seriously the central struggle of the film!
Despite the Brady Bunch-level premise, I enjoyed the film a great deal. It was chock full of delicious melodrama and shouting doctors and crying women and pathetic crazies. Absolutely delightful. There was a lot of plot involving people running around, accidentally behind each other's backs, triangulating and misunderstanding what some third party hath wrought. That sort of business usually annoys and sort of upsets me, however here it felt okay. This film came off like if Tennessee Williams had written a sitcom. Lots of confusion and high-falutin language about how sometimes a doctor has to understand that he's also a human being, and sometimes a wife has to understand that her husband is also a doctor. Fun, frothy, silly stuff!
The film was okay. I greatly enjoyed it, but I think it's working on a wavelength I am perhaps uniquely attuned to. It was very much ado about almost nothing and, after the stakes are established, the film follows the main doctor as he sprints from crisis to crisis. He is also able to perfectly handle all of these crises however (or course!) I enjoy a good melodrama, but it felt like it could have used a little more pacing or a bit fewer plot threads (the film is 2 hrs and 3 minutes long and feels pretty jam-packed.) I enjoyed this, but I don't expect anyone else to.
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