Books: Escape from Fantasy

I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN

Directed by ANTHONY PAGE Screenplay by GAVIN LAMBERT and LEWIS JOHN CARLINO

This latest in a long line of movies about mental institutions is chiefly distinguished by what it does not do. It does not revel in too many lurid scenes of zany inmates being violent or bestial (though it has its share, enough to earn it an R rating). It does not idealize the mental institution as a citadel of scientific wisdom and compassion, nor caricature it as a latter-day Bedlam administered by sadists. It does not explain away its protagonist's schizophrenia with some unearthed childhood trauma, as if the condition were a sort of Freudian acrostic to be solved.

Well, then, what does the movie do?

Based on Joanne Greenberg's 1964 novel, it gives an earnest, intelligent account of Deborah Blake, a teen-ager who returns from suicidal fantasy to a precarious willingness to give life another try. It is a success story, but a measured, qualified one (the title line is the psychiatrist's reply when Deborah complains that reality is painful and difficult compared with the security of the imaginary desert gods who rule her sick mind). The same thing can be said of the movie: it leaves one feeling respectful but not deeply impressed or moved.

Part of the reason is a studied even-handedness that smacks more of documentary than drama. Deborah (Kathleen Quinlan) is blessed with an extraordinarily sympathetic and skillful psychiatrist, Dr. Fried (Bibi Andersson), but the other psychiatrists are portrayed as stodgy and rigid. Most of the patients in the disturbed ward are worse off than Deborah (Sylvia Sidney, Signe Hasso and Susan Tyrrell, among others, have a high old time playing them), but one—who befriends Deborah—is better. One of the male nurses is brutal, but another is kind. And so on.

Quinlan, 22, mirrors Deborah's inner turmoil in a strong and sensitive performance. The splendid Bibi Andersson does as much as possible with the passive role of Dr. Fried, but the film makers' conception of the role is a letdown. There are some absorbing early glimpses of Dr. Fried's sessions with Deborah, but one suspects that several later scenes were cut, as if the film decided to shy away from the struggle of minds. We see Deborah's emotional breakthrough, but the question of precisely how Dr. Fried helped bring it about is fudged.

Suddenly, Dr. Fried and Deborah are toasting each other in a too sweet victory celebration, which is capped by upbeat footage of Deborah and her now cured friend gamboling in the countryside near the hospital. After a good many touching and vivid moments, the film ends not with a bang but a simper.

Christopher Porterfteld