The Snake Pit (1948)

In director Anatole Litvak's psychological drama about the horrors of mental institutions:

• the scenes of the "snake-pit" nature of the mental institution (Juniper Hill State Hospital) and the shadowy images of inmate torture
• the famous top-shot and pull-back image of inmate Virginia Stuart Cunningham (Oscar-nominated Olivia de Havilland) surrounded by insane and babbling patients as her voice-over explained: ("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 someplace 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'd been thrown into it, yes, as though, as though I were in a snake pit")