I'm watching this right now and wow what a mess. It's total nonsense first off the therapy they're using, if that's supposed to be psychoanalysis I'm a hermit crab. I've known psychoanalysts and understand their methods, surely they'd cringe seeing this garbage. As far as story it's bland as heck and boring, you want it over the moment it begins. Nothing redeeming here pure absurdity.

The patients and staff of a mental hospital undergo a number of melodramatic moments as they all come to grips with their rather pedestrian mental health issues. Being an MGM motion picture production, the institution is not some grimy state run place that serves low cost meals and whose halls reek of urine and carbolic. Instead, this place is more like a country club/resort with all the amenities, a modern turn on the tres chic sanitarium run by Claude Rains in Now Voyager.Presiding over the institution is Charles Boyer as the director, but Richard Widmark has all the manic energy as the doctor trying new, less traditional methods on the residents. The most bizarre fact about this flick is that a large part of the plot hinges on which new drapes will be hung in the library - conventional ones or those based on the drawings of sensitive, shy but troubled patient John Kerr. There is lots of back and forth on this subject to the point of being unbelievable.Amid all the kerfuffle on the drapery question, Boyer tries some of his long in the tooth continental charm on attempting to seduce Widmark's wife, the sizzling hot Gloria Grahame. Needless to say, Boyer strikes out embarrassingly. Meanwhile Widmark, who is getting tired of Gloria, starts to have feelings for the activities lady, played by Lauren Bacall. Oscar Levant does his usual droopy eyed slightly melancholic shtick as one of the residents. Now this is the same act that Oscar does while playing piano and attending Parisian cocktail parties in other films, but here, for some reason, the same behavior lands him in a mental hospital.With all these pots boiling, the movie manages, against type, to finish up in a restrained manner, without anything exploding. A most unusual film for 50's MGM, or for MGM of any era previously.

Like a roadside accident, it's difficult to turn away from this bizarre melodrama. Seriously, what were they smoking? The whole movie is like a Saturday Night Live skit that never ends. How was it possible for these actors and actresses to go onto the set each day without cracking up about the absurdity of this story? I suppose it was a different culture back then, but how did they not break down in laughter acting these parts? Or maybe they did. Everything is so completely over the top, the high pitched emotional performances, the strange sets and paintings on the walls, the saturated color and dramatic lighting. It's almost like this movie is taking place in a weird little world far away from the edge of the universe. My greatest disappointment is that the issue of the drapes was never resolved. Really a huge bummer, and it's probably what kept this movie from becoming an enormous hit.

As the great satirist Tom Leher once observed, "If people can't communicate then the very least that they should do is to shut up". "The Cobweb" is a perfect case in point. There's a tremendous amount of talk in this movie, but almost no communication. The plot revolves around the selection of new drapes for the library in a psychiatric hospital. However, it's the lack of communication in regard to that issue, and the complications ensuing therefrom, that form the crux of the story. Along the way it becomes clear that the staff are not all that much more well-adjusted than the inmates. They display a great deal of professional and personal jealousy, insecurity and frustration. But then, as the frustrated head of the Bullock household wisely observed in the classic screwball comedy film, "My Man Godfrey", "All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people." There are plenty of the right kind of people in "The Cobweb", among both the staff and the inmates.Directed by Vincent Minelli and featuring a first-rate cast (including one of the great stars of silent films, Lillian Gish), "The Cobweb" had all the elements to have become a really great movie. Nevertheless, somehow, it doesn't quite come off. Perhaps it's because the film is a little bit too talky. Perhaps the issue of which drapes to hang in the sanatorium library is a bit too minor and superficial to excite the viewer's attention. Nevertheless, if you haven't seen this one, give it a chance, it might just grab you.