"When psychoanalysis enjoyed its Forties vogue, Hollywood discovered an audience fascinated by a hitherto unexposed subject: dramatizations of mental disintegration. Possessed is the case study of a classic split personality, a nurse whose increasingly schizophrenic behavior leads to a murderous conclusion. Louise Howell (Joan Crawford) is hired by a wealthy man (Raymond Massey) to care for his deranged wife. When the latter mysteriously drowns and Louise is suspected of murdering her charge, a distressing guilt complex surfaces. Though tortured by unrequited love for an indifferent architect (Van Heflin), Louise enters a loveless marriage with her widowed employer. The discovery that Heflin loves her wild stepdaughter triggers Louise's psychosis and she kills the object of her obsession.
"As is true of many '40s American films, Possessed is uncompromising in its bleak point of view. Oriented towards affairs of the heart, this film is all the more troubling because the protagonist lacks the mental stamina to extricate herself from this sordid embroglio. Crawford masterfully portrays the despair of a lonely woman slipping into the netherworld of mental annihilation and delusion. Told via flashback, Curtis Bernhardt's film employs sets and a soundtrack which delineate the internal and external states of a shattered individual."