Possessed mixes strong doses of politics and sex into an early variation on the Joan Crawford rags-to-minks recipe. Its sexual frankness brought on censorship problems even in the pre-Production Code era. Crawford portrays a small-town factory girl who hops a train for New York, leaving her boyfriend and illusions behind at the station; both will find and haunt her before the story is played out. In the big city, diligence pays off as she finds her mealticket and her lover in the same person, a married lawyer with political aspirations (played by Clark Gable). She rests easy in his lap of love and luxury until politics force her to give him up. Possessed is a great example of how the studio system paid off artistically: it was not the combined names, but the combined talents of the stars, Gable and Crawford, and the director, Clarence Brown, that raised the film from its melodramatic roots to achieve a lasting integrity and elegance. In a recent reassessment of Possessed, London's National Film Theatre calls the film “a Crawford classic, a caustic study of the American Dream.... The location shooting also looks intensely modern and innovative, and the playing of the two leads is detailed, abrasive and loving. A real discovery.”