PSYCHE 59 (1964)

Five years ago (I'm guessing in 1959, based on the movie's title, since it's set in the present, i.e. 1964), Alison Crawford (Patricia Neal), while pregnant, fell down the stairs. She recovered and went on to deliver a healthy baby, but she suffers from hysterical blindness. The doctors can find no physical reason why she can't see and the general suspicion is that something traumatic happened before her fall that she has suppressed—what’s referred to as a "hole" in her memory. Now, Alison and her husband Eric (Curt Jurgens) are welcoming Alison's younger sister Robin (Samantha Eggar) back into their home after her marriage fell apart. Eric is not comfortable with the arrangement, though we don't know why. When Robin returns, she is not having much luck on the dating scene, complaining, "All the men I used to know have either gotten married or gone queer." Family friend Paul (Ian Bannen) serves as a platonic companion to Alison but clearly has designs on Robin (Paul seems to be neither married nor ‘queer’). When the quartet head out to a country house for a vacation, simmering tensions begin rising, and we discover that Eric and Robin were engaged in an affair five years ago, so it becomes obvious that Alison's repressed trauma has to do with the two of them, which it not really a spoiler since this has been pretty clear from about 15 minutes into the movie. So the score card stands at: Eric has been avoiding rekindling this relationship with Robin; Robin is pressing him to do so; Robin is also teasing Paul; at times, Paul seems like he might have an "older woman" thing for Alison; Eric's aged mother may know than she is letting on; and poor Alison is stumbling (physically and emotionally) around in the dark. When Alison experiences another fall, her sight slowly returns—will her memory of five years ago return?

This is a rather gloomy-looking psychological melodrama filled with close-ups of people's faces and hands. As such, it drags on a bit, though the performances are uniformly fine. Jurgens is a bit too old for the part, but he and Neal do have an interesting chemistry, more of familiarity and respect than of love. Eggar, looking young and beautiful and very much of the 60s, steals most of her scenes if only because she is so radiant and energetic when no one else around her is. Bannen is fine in a somewhat limited role—his character seems largely extraneous to the plot. Beatrix Lehmann is quite good in the similarly limited role of Eric's mother. Neal's performance gets a bit repetitious, but I think that has more to do with the way her character is written than with her acting. For most of the film, she's a rather passive presence, reminding me a bit of Audrey Hepburn in WAIT UNTIL DARK (another blind woman, though in much more physical peril than Neal is). Today, the idea of a memory "hole" due to repressed trauma is fairly common, and therefore the trajectory of the narrative will be more predictable for us than it might have been in 1964. So this winds up more interesting as a period piece than truly compelling. Pictured are Bannen and Eggar. [TCM]