Sybil

This began life as a two-part TV movie (here edited down from 198 minutes) based on the true story of the eleven-year treatment by psychiatrist Cornelia Wilbur of Sybil Dorsett and her sixteen warring personalities. As Dr Wilbur, Joanne Woodward (who had herself essayed a schizophrenic role in The Three Faces of Eve back in 1957) is fascinating, because she employs a theatrical stillness around which all Sally Field’s agonised personalities flutter like trapped birds. Field herself resists the temptation to let go and ham. The result is essentially a classic two-hander: moving despite the surrounding schlock.