Shock

I said I'd get back to some of the other movies in that noir collection, so let's touch on Shock. Anabel Shaw plays Janet Stewart, who is in town to see her husband on leave. Her reservation is lost, but there's another person who won't be in until tomorrow afternoon, so they give her his room. While there, she looks out her window to a room across the way, and sees a man arguing with his wife about a divorce. Then he clubs his wife to death. When Mr. Stewart arrives the next morning, he finds Janet sitting on a sofa, staring into space, dead to the world. The hotel doctor calls a specialist, who just so happens to be the man she saw commit the murder, Dr. Cross (Vincent Price).

The movie is largely Cross' struggle with what to do. He quickly figures out what she saw to put her in this state, and so he wants to help her, but does not want to go to jail. Which means he either has to keep her in a state of shock indefinitely, or figure out some way to "treat" her that will also convince her she didn't see him kill his wife. This struggle isn't aided by his head nurse, Elaine Jordan (Lynn Bari), who is the woman he wanted to divorce his wife for. She has none of Cross' conflict. She's very pure in that regard. She loves Dr. Cross, wants to be with him, and she really doesn't care about what has to be done to make that happen.

Janet gets a bit short-changed, since she spends much of the film in shock, emerging from it periodically to accuse Dr. Cross of murder, then subsides. Her husband gets more time, and doesn't do much with it other than being concerned and eventually suspicious. Still, I find Janet's situation fascinating, if highly depressing. She is rightfully afraid for her life. A man she knows to be a killer has been placed in charge of her well-being, been given the power to pass judgment on her mental fitness. He can drug her, subject her to insulin shock, dismiss her fears as delusions, keep her husband from visiting, and no one will question it. At one point she makes it out of her room, and pleads with an orderly to help her, that Cross will kill her. The orderly does that condescending thing that's meant to be reassuring, but he's basically blowing her off.

That whole thing has to be horrifying. Would she feel like the last sane person, or would everyone else's insistence she's wrong make her doubt her own mind? What's the longterm effect of that for her? Is she going to lose faith in her judgement, or be especially sensitive to people questioning her perspective? It's one of the things that concerns me about going to doctors. How do I know what I'm being prescribed is in my best interests, rather than their wallets' best interest? It's not limited to the medical profession, since obviously we could have these same questions about politicians, or whoever. There's always that fear the person you rely on to work for you, is only interested in themselves. It's bad enough for some physical injury, or tax rates. But when it involves your very sanity, your ability to be considered a rational person capable of making your own decisions, that's scary.