British actress Samanta Eggar died last year, and when she died, I mentioned a couple of her movies that were coming up on TCM over the following few weeks. I didn't realize at the time that I had a lesser known movie of hers on my DVR, in part because she's technically the supporting actress here. That movie is Psyche 59.
The star here is Patricia Neal playing Alison Crawford, and as the movie is opening she's on a horse ride through the parks of London with family friend Paul (Ian Bannen). You could be forgiven for thinking the two of them are married, since Paul is around enough and Alison's two kids treat Paul like a second father. In fact, Alion is married to Eric (Curd Jürgens credited once again as Curt). Alison is also wearing the sort of sunglasses that lead the viewer to believe that she's blind. In fact, she is.
But, this is that weird sort of movie blindness that occurred in some sort of accident and isn't a real physical blindness but the sort of pyschological issue where her brain just won't process the images the optic nerve is sending it because reasons that make no sense with our more modern understanding of science, but bear with it because we wouldn't have a movie otherwise. As to what the accident is, Alison has blocked it from her mind and nobody else bothers to tell her what happened to see if anything will jog her memory because, again, if any of them did that, we'd have a lot less of a movie.
Alison and Eric's marriage seems to be reasonbly OK, although there is a bit of a strain in the family relationshpi in the form of Alison's younger sister Robin (Samantha Eggar). She for whatever reason hasn't been able to have a successful long-term relationship, and with her current marriage breaking up, she's hoping to stay with Alison and Eric for a while. Eric's reaction to all of this is to treat Robin as though he might be up for an affair with her, or that he might have had an affair with her at some point in the past. Alison can't see any of this, but she's no dummy just because she's blind.
To get away from all of this, Alison and Robin decide to go visit their elderly mother, who lives in what would be a nice old house by the sea if only she could keep the house up at her age. Another thing that isn't so nice about it is the fact that it rekindles old negative feelings that Alison and Robin had for each other, and that they had toward their mother. Well, Alison and Mom especially; Robin seems a bit oblivious to this. The two men stay behind in London for a few days, which gives them the chance to have a conversation in which Eric reveals that yes, he really did have an affair with Robin when she was about 17 or so, and that it wasn't the only woman other than Alison that he's had.
Eventually Eric and Paul join the women out in the country, but things get worse in some ways and better than others. Robin starts riding a horse wildly, accidentally knocking Alison down. This, however, restores Alison's vision! She, however, decides not to tell anybody at first. Robin has a jumping accident and learns the truth about Robin and Eric as a result of what she sees. This leads to the climax that the screenwriter obviously hoped would be shocking to viewers of the time.
Psyche 59 is another of the movies where it feels like there's an interesting build-up but, once the movie gets to the climax, the writer can't quite figure out how to make everything that's come before work together, with the result that the finale is a slow fizzle. But, it's easy to see why the cast members would want to make the movie, as the original treatment must have sounded like it was better than the finished product turned out to be. One plus is the black-and-white cinematogrphy, although unfortunately, cinematography alone isn't enough to save a movie like Psyche 59.
There's a reason why I hadn't heard of Psyche 59 before, and after you watch it, you'll probably understand why you hadn't heard of it either.
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