Favorite screen or stage portrayal of a character's descent into madness (spiralling or otherwise)?

"Falling Down" is a pretty good movie about a guy's slide into paranoid personality disorder.

"Girl, Interrupted" is a great book, and pretty good movie, about several young girls' battles with delusions, personality disorders, and schizophrenia.

"The Basketball Diaries" is a great movie that tells the story of a star athlete who's mental decline is linked to heroin addiction. "Leaving Las Vegas" is also a really good movie graphically depicting the mental toll of alcohol addiction, and co-dependence. And, of course, you can see Tony Montana's descent into cocaine madness in the movie "Scarface."

My personal favorite book is "The Bell Jar," by Sylvia Path. (There's an old movie made from it, but I haven't seen it.) A semi-autobiographical story about a young woman's struggle with crippling depression, at a time when the cure was worse than the disease. Truly heart-breaking.

And, finally, my favorite movie along these lines is "Dead Poets Society." A successful young man with his whole life ahead of him commits suicide.

Squidward on Spongebob. Not sure of the episode name, but Mr. Krabbs put Squidward in charge of the Krusty Krab, and Squidward decided to take the day off, leaving Spongebob to handle the restaurant. The day off was ruined as Squidward began to obsess over Spongebob destroying the place. By the way, I am not kidding with this answer. Truly a great decent into madness.

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman showed Willie Loman's descent into oblivion better than anything I have ever seen. It is not madness he went into but it was equally disabling.

The Caine Mutiny with Humphrey Bogart was an excellent protrayal of descent into madness.

Louis L'Amour's Conager.....both movie and the book.......has probably the best portrayal of descent into loneliness I have ever seen. Loneliness is not far from madness. It was very interesting the way the lady reached out to keep from going mad by writing poems and attaching them to tumble weeds.

I just recently saw "Sunset Boulevard" with Gloria Swanson and William Holden. If you've ever seen that movie than you should know that hands down it would win your question, especially at the end of the movie. If you haven't rent it some place and enjoy.

Two famous quotes from the movie:

William Holden- "I know you. You're Norma Desmond. You used to be big."

Gloria Swanson-"I am big, it's the pictures that've gotten smaller.

Gloria Swanson- "Mr. DeVille, I'm ready for my close up."

I ******* love Jim Carrey and my absolute typical character must be Ace Ventura (or consistent with hazard Lloyd Christmas) BQ. the only element i can remember staring at replaced into something approximately Clint Eastwood and that had Jim Carrey. It replaced into particularly stable - truly the impact haha. BQ2. i can't call only one - Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, frightening action picture (i admire the third one the terrific), Blazing Saddles, bare Gun Trilogy, plane! etc.

Omigod.

Anthony Hopkins in the 1978 movie "Magic".

Incredible performance by Hopkins.