Psyche 59 is a 1964 British drama film directed by Alexander Singer and starring Patricia Neal, Curd Jürgens, Samantha Eggar, Ian Bannen, Beatrix Lehmann and Elspeth March.

[2][3][4] Alison is apparently happy as a wife and the mother of two daughters despite her blindness, caused by a fall during pregnancy.

She is helped by her devoted husband, Eric, a London businessman, an elderly French maid, and Paul, a close family friend.

Robin takes Alison shopping and suggests she see a specialist about her eyes.

In the family's town house Robin is very flirty and appears to mean to seduce or somehow punish Eric.

Alison cannot see this but knows the mood has changed and asks what Robin is wearing.

When her sister does not answer she touches her knee and feels the skimpy nightdress and leaves the room.

Later, Alison tells Robin she sometimes thinks she may recall the event that caused her sight loss.

Alison and Robin go to the family's country house to supervise repairs that their mother has cancelled.

The mother reveals that as children Alison used to take the things Robin held dear.

On the drive down Eric suggests Paul might win Robin over by beating her and using a belt on her.

He asks her advice on his relationship with Robin, and Alison suggests he cuts himself free, or love can be "like committing suicide".

The horse clips Alison, who falls, but from the grass, she tells a concerned Eric that she is alright.

She goes to the door of the bedroom and sees a blurred shape of Eric, who sat on the bed above her sister.

Her mother suspects something, and won't let Alison return upstairs, saying lunch is nearly ready.

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "'The Screen Prowls The Lonely Place Where Lust Hides!'

proclaims the poster, raising hopes which the first half of the film conspicuously fails to fulfil.

It is glossy, smooth and dull, but elegantly designed, with lots of Frinkish sculpture and similar signs of affluence.

The dialogue, too, is modishly sprinkled with French and German to show how cosmopolitan it all is, and with psychological chit-chat to make sure that everyone gets the point about Allison's psychosomatic blindness.

All this is presumably intended to establish the characters and their relationships, but in fact the exposition is so weak that it is often difficult to sort out who is who.

By the time Beatrix Lehmann appears as Grandmother, a dotty old woman devoted to astrology, she seems much the sanest person present.

The climax, in which Robin is inexplicably thrown from a horse, Allison contemplates suicide, and Eric and Paul play a glumly savage set of tennis, has almost the inspired silliness of a Joan Crawford movie.

Miss Lehmann's cool, acidulous voice cuts across the fatuity with quiet malice.