The Snake Pit (1948)

Celia Sommerville: And we're so crowded already. I just don't know where it's all gonna end!
Virginia Stuart Cunningham: I'll tell you where it's gonna end, Miss Somerville... When there are more sick ones than well ones, the sick ones will lock the well ones up.

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Virginia Stuart Cunningham: It was strange, here I was among all those people, and at the same time I felt as if I were looking at them from some place far away, the whole place seemed to me like a deep hole and the people down in it like strange animals, like... like snakes, and I've been thrown into it... yes... as though... as though I were in a snake pit...
Doctor Mark Kik: A snake pit?
Virginia Stuart Cunningham: Later, weeks later, I understood. I remembered once reading in a book that long ago they used to put insane people into pits full of snakes. I think they figured that something which might drive a normal person insane, might shock an insane person back into sanity. Did you ever hear of that?
Doctor Mark Kik: Yes.
Virginia Stuart Cunningham: Well, it was just as though they'd thrown me into a snake pit. And I was shocked into thinking that maybe I wasn't as sick as the others... and I really might get well.

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Mrs. Greer: Good afternoon, my dear. I don't think I've had the pleasure of seeing you here before.
Virginia Stuart Cunningham: I'm Virginia Cunningham. I came from Five.
Mrs. Greer: Nobody comes to One from Five. Even I had to spend a few days in Two before coming here. And I, my dear, have money.
Virginia Stuart Cunningham: That must be convenient.
Mrs. Greer: My husband, Mr. Greer, is very wealthy. I have more jewels than I can possibly wear. You, of course, are a charity patient?
Virginia Stuart Cunningham: Oh, no. It so happens that my husband, Mr. Cunningham, is very wealthy. My diamonds simply weigh me down.
Mrs. Greer: I have the Hope Diamond!
Virginia Stuart Cunningham: I have the Hopeless Emerald! It carries the Cunningham curse. You've probably read about it.
Mrs. Greer: Mr. Greer...
Virginia Stuart Cunningham: Your husband?
Mrs. Greer: Mr. Greer, my husband, considered buying it, but it has a flaw. You see, you can't put an imperfect stone on the most beautiful hands in the world.

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When Virginia and Robert go to the movies in their courtship days, the offscreen fanfare indicates that they are watching a 20th Century Fox film, the same studio that made "The Snake Pit".
Ginger Rogers wrote that she turned down the lead in this film, as well as To Each His Own, both of which Olivia de Havilland accepted. Olivia won an Oscar for To Each His Own and was nominated for this film. Rogers wrote: "It seemed Olivia knew a good thing when she saw it. Perhaps Olivia should thank me for such poor judgment".
The British censor insisted on a foreword explaining that everyone in the film was an actor and that conditions in British mental hospitals were unlike those depicted.
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