The Secret Heart (1946)

A woman (Claudette Colbert) becomes concerned when her stepdaughter (June Allyson) shows signs of the psychological instability that destroyed her father (Richard Derr). The girl's psychiatrist (Lionel Barrymore) suggests returning to the scene of the father's suicide, the family farm which they haven't seen in 10 years. Directed by Robert Z. Leonard, this melodrama contains the same dubious psychological theories of other 1940s films that dabbled in psychology like SPELLBOUND and THE SEVENTH VEIL. The screenplay doesn't have the courage to follow through with the darker aspects of the story and a possible pessimistic conclusion. Instead, we get instant healing and a ever after happy ending. Cast against type, June Allyson abandons the fresh scrubbed girl next door persona and is effective as the disturbed father-obsessed daughter with an Electra complex. With Walter Pidgeon, Robert Sterling, Patricia Medina, Marshall Thompson, Barbara Billingsley and Eily Malyon.