Film

David and Lisa

Name: David and Lisa
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: 1962
Cast: Keir Dullea, Janet Margolin, Howard Da Silva, Neva Patterson, Clifton James

Drama

A 1962 indie drama about two damaged teenagers in a psychiatric home—David paralyzed by fear of touch, Lisa fractured into separate selves. Tender and unsentimental, it treats mental illness as genuinely limiting rather than picturesque. A quiet film about connection despite everything, made with surprising directness and care.

TMDb rating

3.6

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are drawn to quiet, patient character studies where two damaged young people circle each other slowly, and the tenderness comes from small gestures rather than speeches.

Skip it if you need plot momentum, because this moves at an unhurried pace and leans hard on its own uneasy, fragile mood.

What it asks of you: Expect a slow, deliberate rhythm with long stretches of quiet and small scenes, across about ninety-five minutes, and real patience with discomfort rather than release.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest1975

A more famous asylum film, but sharper and angrier. Where David and Lisa whispers, this roars—and it's just as interested in how institutions fail their patients and how people survive within them.

But Much louder and more theatrical. The humor is broader, the confrontations explicit rather than suggested. Some find it dated in its politics.

Girl, Interrupted1999

Another portrait of young people in a psychiatric hospital learning to be human together. Smart, funny, and equally uninterested in easy answers about what 'sick' means or how people get well.

But More glamorous and conventional in shape. The film sits somewhere between indie sensibility and studio product, which can feel like it's trying to have things both ways.

Splendor in the Grass1961

William Inge's portrait of desire and mental fragility across a marriage. Like David and Lisa, it's serious about the cost of repression and the way trauma echoes. The intimacy is earned, never assured.

But Romance-tragedy in the classical mode. If you want something lighter or less committed to the gravity of emotional damage, this will feel relentless.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from David and Lisa

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Shirley2020

Both are intimate films about fractured consciousness—one treats it as pathology requiring care, the other as the price of artistic vision. The mirror tells you something about how we diagnose minds that don't fit.

Elisabeth Moss as Shirley Jackson during the composition of 'The Lottery,' trapped in her own mind and marriage. A film about a woman fragmenting the way Lisa fragments—but through genius and rage rather than illness. Same structure of consciousness splintering, utterly different register.

But Deliberately claustrophobic and psychologically nasty. Not about healing or connection but about the cost of being brilliant and trapped. Some find it punishing.

The Quiet Earth1985

A small, thoughtful New Zealand film about isolation and connection. Two people learning to exist together after everything else is gone. Same emotional core as David and Lisa, different premise entirely.

But Post-apocalyptic, so it trades intimacy for landscape and existential dread. A tonal shift that won't work if you're looking for something as contained and interior.

Lilith1964

Robert Rossen's strange, hypnotic film about a therapist drawn into the world of a patient with severe dissociation. Beautiful black-and-white photography and real uncertainty about who understands whom.

But Oblique and slow. It doesn't explain itself, and some find it pretentious rather than mysterious. The romance is genuinely ambiguous in ways that frustrate viewers wanting clarity.

A Woman Under the Influence1974

Cassavetes on mental illness and marriage—raw, repetitive, sometimes unbearable to watch. Gena Rowlands is extraordinary. It's about what happens when one person's mind doesn't work the way the world needs it to.

But Deliberately difficult. Long scenes of breakdown and miscommunication. If you want catharsis or neat resolution, this offers neither. The acting style is deliberately unpolished.

Suddenly, Last Summer1959

Tennessee Williams on trauma and desire, with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. Gothic and intense, but built on the same recognition that psychological damage is real and shapes everything.

But Much darker and more lurid. The sexuality is explicit in ways David and Lisa avoids. Garden-variety melodrama compared to the quiet of the earlier film.

The Manchurian Candidate1962

Released the same year as David and Lisa, it's also about fractured minds and the failure of institutions to help. Political thriller rather than intimate drama, but the paranoia runs parallel.

But Very much of its moment, concerned with Cold War politics. The thriller machinery can feel dated. It's a much busier film with less room for silence.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden1977

Adaptation of the classic memoir about a girl in a psychiatric hospital learning to choose reality over delusion. Compassionate and specific about what recovery actually costs. Serious about mental illness in the way David and Lisa is.

But Very earnest, sometimes feels like a PSA for psychiatric treatment. Less dramatically surprising, more straightforwardly reassuring about the therapeutic process.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden poster

The Uninvited1944

Both pivot on unspoken trauma making connection impossible. One dresses it as haunting, the other as psychiatric diagnosis—but the emotional architecture is the same.

A ghost story, but really a film about a woman's mind haunted by trauma she can't name. Made 18 years before David and Lisa, but working the same emotional ground: how do you touch someone fractured by what they won't remember? Black-and-white and atmospheric where David and Lisa is naturalistic, but identically concerned with the unspeakable.

But A period horror film. The genre machinery is real—ghosts, séances, period setting. If you want psychology without the supernatural, you won't get it here. Can feel overwrought.