| Sybil | |
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DVD cover of Sybil |
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| Directed by | Daniel Petrie |
| Written by | Flora Rheta Schreiber (book), Stewart Stern (teleplay) |
| Starring | Sally Field Joanne Woodward |
| Production company | Lorimar Productions |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Original channel | NBC |
| Release date | November 14, 1976 |
| Running time | 187 minutes |
Sybil is a 1976 drama film that originally aired as a made-for-television miniseries. It was based on the book of the same name.
Contents |
Sally Field starred in the title role, with Joanne Woodward playing the part of Sybil's psychiatrist, Cornelia B. Wilbur. Woodword herself had starred in The Three Faces of Eve, in which she portrayed a woman with 3 personalities, winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for the role. Based on the book Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber, the movie dramatizes the life of a shy young graduate student, Sybil Dorsett (in real life, Shirley Ardell Mason), suffering from dissociative identity disorder as a result of the psychological trauma she suffered as a child. With the help of her psychiatrist, Sybil gradually recalls the severe child abuse that led to the development of 13 different personalities. Field's portrayal of Sybil won much critical acclaim, as well as an Emmy Award.
Sybil Dorsett is a young artist from Willow Corners, Wisconsin who is employed as a substitute teacher while she works on her M.A. degree. She has periodic blackouts that last anywhere from a few minutes to a few years. An episode that began in front of her young students in a park, ended several hours later in Sybil's apartment with her wrist cut, and a drawing of a swinging light bulb on her artist easel.
Sybil ends up in a clinic. Dr. Cornelia Wilbur (Joanne Woodward) is called in to give Sybil a neurological examination. Sybil has tunnel vision and is talking like a small child. During the smell test, Sybil is visibly disturbed at the scent of disinfectant. In Dr. Wilbur's clinic office, Sybil has a blackout. Sybil admits to having blackouts and fears they are getting worse. Dr. Wilbur theorizes that the incidents are a kind of hysteria, all related to a deeper problem. She asks Sybil to return at a later date for more counseling.
Sybil's widowed father Willard Dorsett (William Prince), who has moved to Chicago, is in town on his honeymoon with his new bride Freida (Jane Hoffman). At a lunch in a museum cafeteria, Sybil tries to explain her illness and the visit to Dr. Wilbur. Her father belongs to a religion that does not believe in "practitioners of the mind" and begins quoting Scripture to Sybil. She loses control and runs out of the museum. Sybil awakes in her own bed, trying to drown out her mother's voice in her head, and the memories of the past few days.
Dr. Wilbur receives a late night call from someone who identifies herself as Vickie and says Sybil is about to jump out a window of the Staten Hotel in Harlem. Dr. Wilbur rescues Sybil, who denies knowing Vickie. The personality of 9-year-old Peggy emerges, babbling about "the white house", screaming "I have to get out". Peggy is remembering Dr. Quinoness and others in white coats in a white room, holding her down to administer ether for a tonsillectomy. She's terrified of her mother and begs a nice young doctor to take her home with him so she can be his little girl. As the nice doctor is leaving she bangs on the window. Sybil puts her hand through the hotel room window.
Sybil and Richard J. Loomis (Brad Davis), her neighbor in the next building whose window faces hers, have been observing each other curiously. As Sybil is walking down the street, Richard invites her to take a horse carriage ride in the tourist rig he drives during the daytime. He says he's noticed her painting at night and playing with dolls, and she denies she does that. The personality of Vickie emerges, speaks in French and tells him about her spoiled life in France. Richard accepts it as part of her charm.
Sophisticated 13-year-old personality Vickie shows up to keep Sybil's appointment with Dr. Wilbur. She is dressed in an attractive business suit, wearing white gloves, speaks French, and calls herself Victoria Antoinette Scharleau and says her mother lives in Paris. Vickie explains that Sybil's alter personalities keep the memories that Sybil is unable to handle. Dr. Wilbur asks Vickie who the other personalities are. Vickie says Marcia is going to kill Sybil someday. One of the personalities plays the piano, but Vickie will not tell her name. Marcia shows up for the next appointment (not shown, but discussed in a voice-over by Dr. Wilbur), saying she is the one who tried to kill Sybil at the hotel. In Dr. Wilbur's voice-over, she discusses also the pictures Marcia has drawn illustrating scenes from her nightmares. All the personalities allow Dr. Wilbur to photograph them.
Richard Loomis invites Sybil to accompany him to his night time job as a street musician. The musician personality of Vanessa emerges to go with Richard. His son Matthew (Tommy Crebbs) says he knows Sybil from watching her through the window, and, "That's not Sybil. Sybil stayed home." Vanessa says her mother wanted to be a concert pianist but was forced to stay home and demonstrate pianos in the family music store. As Richard is performing, the hooks from the umbrellas cause the personality of Peggy to emerge and she runs away. Richard finds her in a public restroom where she is drawing a picture of a hanging light bulb. Sybil emerges and tells Richard of her childhood friend Danny who danced and sang like Fred Astaire, who is a young boy she knew when they were kids.
The personality of Vanessa shows up for Sybil's next appointment with Dr. Wilbur, singing and playing the piano while she talks about Richard Loomis. She tells Dr. Wilbur that some of the personalities are boys, and that Richard had actually kissed the one named Mike. Peggy begins to emerge. She talks about the green kitchen and "the hands" and the music on the piano. Sybil emerges. Dr. Wilbur plays the session's tape, and when a voice that sounds like her mother Hattie speaks, Ruthie, another personality, this time of a baby, emerges and Dr. Wilbur finds her sitting in the fetal position in a corner sucking her thumb.
Vickie shows up for an appointment during the Christmas season and tells Dr. Wilbur it's all falling apart. The grandmotherly personality of Mary thinks she's in heaven. Marcia is talking about suicide. Sybil has invited Richard for Christmas dinner. The personalities made Dr. Wilbur a Christmas card, but Sybil made everything purple. Vickie has brought Dr. Wilbur paintings and says she cannot tell Sybil, because the paintings are done at night and hid in a secret closet shelf that Mike made. Dr. Wilbur hypnotizes Vickie and asks about the purple. The memory that comes forth is one of repeated abuses by Hattie, and of being locked in the wheat bin in the barn where Sybil uses her purple crayon to scratch on the inside of the bin so someone will know she had been there.
Sybil and Richard and his son Matthew have Christmas dinner together, with Richard spending the night in Sybil's apartment. Sybil awakes in the middle of a nightmare and babbles about Dr. Wilbur. Richard panics and calls Dr. Wilbur who warns him about the multiple personalities. Dr. Wilbur arrives to find Richard has just rescued Sybil from an attempt to jump off the roof. While Dr. Wilbur sedates Sybil, she babbles about being in love with Richard. Sybil comes home one day and sees Richard's apartment is empty. Sybil feels deserted.
Sybil arrives for an appointment and tells Dr. Wilbur it's all been a lie, that she does not have multiple personalities.
While on a lecture tour to Chicago, Dr. Wilbur talks to Willard Dorsett who admits to knowledge of "a bruise or two—from time to time", but denies his late wife Hattie inflicted them. He mentions that he once had Hattie examined by a psychiatrist, who diagnosed her with Paranoid schizophrenia, but says the doctors were wrong.
Dr. Wilbur drives to Willow Corners and asks a tractor farmer (Gordon Jump) how to find Dr. Quinoness (Charles Lane), who pulls Sybil's records which confirms all the injuries. Dr. Quinoness gives Dr. Wilbur a frightening account of extensive scar tissue he found while examining Sybil for a bladder problem, knowing the whole time that the only way it could be caused is from abuse. He is beset with guilt for not having taken action to protect Sybil from abuse.
In the big white house, Dr. Wilbur visits the green kitchen with its swinging light bulb, just like drawn in the pictures. She goes to the barn and finds the wheat bin with the purple crayon scratches inside. Dr. Wilbur takes the piece of wood with the purple crayon scratches back to New York to show Sybil all those things really happened.
For memory healing, Dr. Wilbur drives Sybil back to Willow Corners. While sitting outdoors beneath a tree painting, Peggy emerges and remembers how every morning in the green kitchen her mother tied her feet spreadeagle to a broom handle and hoisted her feet-up to the light to give her a cold water disinfectant enema. She also hurt her private parts with knives and Button hooks to teach her what men do with women when they grow up. As Peggy is confessing, the doctor hears other things that the mom did to her such as burn her hands with an iron, stick her hands in the oven and turn the gas on, stick a flashlight inside her, etc. Then, Peggy tells the doctor that her mom would tie Sybil to the piano and play Dvorák making Sybil hold her water (from the enema) until the very last note is played.
Dr. Wilbur hypnotizes Sybil to introduce her to all her other 13 selves so that she may become whole again. This is the final emancipation from her traumatic childhood, and Sybil is now free.
The film, originally 198 minutes long, was initially shown over the course of two nights on NBC in 1976. Due to high public interest, the VHS version of Sybil, released in the 1980s, was edited, with one version running 122 minutes and another, extended version running 132 minutes. Several key scenes, including Sybil's final climactic "introduction" to each of her 13 selves maybe more, are missing in both versions. The film is shown frequently on television, often with scenes restored or deleted to adjust for time constraints and the varying sensitivity of viewers. The DVD, however, includes the full 198 minute version originally displayed on the NBC broadcast.
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