The Snake Pit (1948)

The Snake Pit (1948), starring Olivia de Havilland and directed by Anatole Litvak, is a high watermark in the cycle of films from the film noir period, that may be referred to as 'the paranoid woman' picture.

There were many of these films, all bearing the same tropes, and all focused intensely on one female lead, who spends the movie in constant fear, living in a creepy house with a controlling husband, suffering a diagnoses of madness, and facing imaginary rivals and forces that seem to specific to her.

As an example of this form, The Snake Pit reached even further into the darks by controversially showing an institutionalised women, played by Olivia de Havilland, at the hands of a brutal psychiatric system, being given electro-shock therapy as a part of her 'treatment'.

Brutal is an apt enough term to describe what passed for a psychiatric system at the time. Although the methodology is now barbaric and out of date, film noir always did have a fascination with Freud, and with analysis, as new ways of interpreting and expressing social roles, behaviours and problems.

The Dark Mirror (1946)

There was clearly huge cinematic fun to be had with the special effect which allowed two Olivia de Havilland’s to appear side by side on the same screen.

The name of that film noir fun is The Dark Mirror ― a crazed noir fable from 1946, 

Fun is correct in fact ― when the twins appear side by side for the first time, although the subject in hand is a grisly murder and an obvious deception ― both twins must know exactly which twin committed the murder ― Dimitri Tiomkin’s score turns to a light form of circus music ― and a merry pantomime plays as Thomas Mitchell scratches his head, acts befuddled and effectively says “well I never!” for a full minute.

Mitchell often did play comedy however as a character actor. In fact he was in some of the very best films of the period, including  Lost Horizon (1937); Stagecoach (1939); The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939); Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939); Gone with the Wind (1939); It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and High Noon (1952). He won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1940 for his role as the drunken Doc Boone in John Ford's Stagecoach (1939).

With the comedy dealt with, The Dark Mirror’s next plunge is very film noir indeed ― into psychoanalysis.