Stairway to Light (1945) User Reviews

The Doctor Who Treated The Insane Like Human Beings

[theowinthrop · 7/10 · 18 January 2007]

I actually saw this short on television back in the 1960s, and never forgot about it. Dr. Philippe Pinel was an early doctor (from France) who handled the inmates of asylums. In the 18th Century the average mental doctor or alienist (one did not call them psychologists or psychiatrists yet - there was no real psychiatry) treated the mentally ill as though they were only slightly better than a criminal. Dr. Benjamin Rush, for example, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and a leading physician and spokesman for American democracy - but his invention to assist the mentally ill was an isolation - style device that sealed the patient in total darkness. It was not to cure the patient, but to so isolate him or her as to shut the patient up! Pinel did something that showed a fine spirit and originality - he treated his patients as though they were sick human beings. He did not chain them to chairs or beds or walls. He used kindness and simple acts of normality to remind the mentally ill how to react to proper behavior. It was rudimentary psychiatry, but compared to what was going on around the world it was light years ahead of anyone else.

Pinel got his position due to the favoritism of aristocrats who knew him in France. In 1793, a mob of Revolutionaries chased Pinel in the streets of Paris to kill him as a typical aristocratic stooge (this was not unusual during the Revolution - the great chemist Lavoisier was sent to the guillotine because he had been one of the Farmer Generals of the Revenues in the Ancien Regime, and Fouquier Tinville (his prosecutor) supposedly said "The Revolution has no need for scientists!" as they took him away; also the mathematician Condercet, a leading Girondist, committed suicide when facing a similar fate by the Jacobins).

Pinel was cornered by the mob, when a respectable elderly man came over and started attacking members of the mob with his cane. The mob members fled, and the man took Pinel into a building to recover. It turned out the man was one Hector Chevigny, the first man that Pinel's treatment of decency helped recover his sanity.

It was an interesting study of one of the first steps towards modern treatment of the insane.

The Insane Are People

[boblipton · 7/10 · 12 October 2023]

This episode of MGM's long-running short subject series concerns Doctor Philippe Pinel. Never heard of him? That's something that can be said about most of the subjects of this series. Pinel was an indifferently successful doctor who became the head of an insane asylum during the First Republic. In attempting to understand what was actually wrong with his patients, some of whom had been imprisoned for more than thirty years, he made a great discovery. He realized that kindness was more likely to cure them than chaining them up and beating them.

Radical stuff at the time, and perhaps even in 1945, when this short was released. It won an Oscar for Best Short Subject.

Cartoonish short about Dr. Philippe Pinel

[charlytully · 6/10 · 4 March 2011]

It's sort of hopeless to rely on this WWII-era short OR IMDb for information about Dr. Pinel, generally credited as a seminal transition figure in the treatment of the mentally ill. Even the Wikipedia site manages the correct spelling of the doctor's surname, unlike the IMDb character listing in the "Full Cast & Crew" section here.

Passing Parade mastermind John Nesbitt goes for a combination of milking a perhaps apocryphal tale from Dr. P.'s early practice, in a fashion later mastered by the TWILIGHT ZONE with a twist not quite worthy of the later radio master Paul Harvey's REST OF THE STORY.

Considering that this 10-minute piece is not particularly entertaining, it is too bad Nesbitt's focus here is on questionable "facts" peripheral to Pinel's practice, rather than his hallmark development of the "case history" technique for mental patients, prompted by his perception of a mistreated case of depression which led to the suicide of one of his youthful friends.

Nesbitt, of course, is no scholar of medical history, but it is too bad his series apparently could not afford a decent fact-checker, along the lines of Bunny Watson, whom Katharine Hepburn portrayed in 1957's DESK SET. Bunny would have found out that Dr. P. was NOT the first, but at best the third medical professional to release mental patients from chains, following the lead of Vincenzo Chiarusi and his own occasional colleague, Jean-Baptiste Pussin.

Interesting

[Michael_Elliott · 26 February 2008]

Stairway to Light (1945)

*** (out of 4)

Oscar winning short about how mentally disabled people were at one time thrown into dark dungeons and chained to walls until Dr. Phillipe Pinel determined that love could cure any disease. This short means well and tells an interesting story but I'm really not sure Charles Manson would be a better person if we just released him from prison and said we loved him.

Turner Classic Movies usually shows this as part of their Oscar month so that will be your best shot at seeing this.

Honorable subject, but high school play execution at best

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 24 February 2018]

"Stairway to Light" is an American black-and-white sound short film from 1945, so this one is from the year WWII ended and this makes it already over 70 years old. There is acting in here, but it feels very much like a documentary from start to finish during these 10 minutes. The writer and narrator is John Nesbitt and this is another of his Passing Parades and it got directed by Sammy Lee, a 2-time Academy Award nominee at this point already in a category that does not exist today anymore (dance direction). Here we go several centuries back and find out about a man named Phillipe Pinel who fought in France for the rights of insane asylum patients and helped many of them to get back their dignity, or in some cases even their freedom. He had to pay a big prize for his honorable efforts though as we find out in a sequence that shows us how the tables were turned in terms of keeping the crazy ones in/out. The contents are fine, but the film in detail does look very sloppy in terms of story and other production values. I think it fit in well with the sizzling issue of concentration camps at that time (maybe that explains the Oscar win in the historic context), but I just don't think it was a particularly insightful watch and that the subject deserves much better overall. So I give it a thumbs-down and don't recommend checking it out.

An Oscar winning one-reel short from an extended series of shorts done by MGM

[llltdesq · 10/10 · 20 June 2001]

Back when going to the movies was practically an all-day affair, studios made short subjects and most studios had regular series of shorts that followed a basic framework and usually had the same narrator, writers, etc. One of the best and most successful was The Passing Parade, which took its stories from real life, either everyday people in everyday life or footnotes in history, such as the subject of this Oscar winning short. Narrated in an almost flat, somewhat folksy style by John Nesbitt, it tells of the early efforts of one French doctor to help the criminally insane. A very effective and memorable piece, Turner Classic Movies runs this as filler regularly, particularly in March as part of their "31 Days of Oscar" feature. Highly recommended.

Well worth checking out..and now on DVD

[mrobbins · 8/10 · 3 January 2011]

What a wonderfully humane story, of a great man who needs to be better known for his innovations. I'm now on the lookout for a more in depth study of his work. I'm sure for one so pivotal in the treatment in those labeled as 'mad' or 'insane', that one must exist. Perhaps those who have seen this and were interested enough to investigate further, can recommend a good one

I've just seen this as one of the extras on the 2010 Australian (Region 4) DVD release of the 1945 classic "The Picture Of Dorian Gray". So if you're looking to find a permanent copy on DVD, in an excellent transfer, that's where you'll locate it. Hope that helps those who enjoyed this fabulous story

mental illness is not a crime

[lee_eisenberg · 10/10 · 30 December 2016]

Sammy Lee's "Stairway to Light" looks at Philippe Pinel, who revolutionized how people deal with mental illness. This story is important nowadays because of how we see mentally ill people treated like criminals. Part of this is lack of understanding of mental illness, but it's mostly police forces that get trained to treat everything as a crime with no nuance. Does a cop have to kill a mentally ill relative of a celebrity or politician before the police get forced to treat mental illness as a health issue?

Anyway, this was the first time that I had ever heard of Philippe Pinel. Everyone who cares about studying mental illness should heed his advice. "Stairway to Light" isn't a great short, but a good introduction to Pinel's work.