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The unknown like a fortress, per the title, one can storm it or join its golf course. "Ethics and textbooks" are what the callow doctor (Robert Donat) has upon arrival at the Welsh village, welcomed by a mordant colleague (Ralph Richardson): "Killed anybody yet?" Ignorance and superstition grip the locals, they ask for nugatory "pink medicine" in order to return to the coal mines but the newcomer recognizes a typhoid epidemic. The occupation is a grind, the glow from the resuscitation of a stillborn baby immediately gives way to the sight of a family wake. Old ways sometimes can feel like an open sewer, if progress means dynamite then dynamite it is. "Farewell to one bit of rottenness." The struggling clinic set up by the physician and his wife (Rosalind Russell) and enticed by big-city luxury is a filmmaking metaphor fully understood by King Vidor, back at MGM after a stint as an independent. (Penelope Dudley Ward's flirty socialite provides blonde temptation in this London transposition of Our Daily Bread.) An abbreviated courtship, a microscope for a wedding gift. Principles are put to the test by the slick chum (Rex Harrison) who's learned to exploit moneyed hypochondriacs. "Welcome to the inner sanctum." Ford's Arrowsmith is a notable precedent, but vide also La Cava's Symphony of Six Million. From an amputation in the pit to a convertible with the clique, nothing like money to corrode the healer, the demise of a fellow idealist is the shock needed to trigger his reawakening. (Cecil Parker revealing the tuxedo under his surgical scrubs following a botched operation is the last straw.) "Keep on hoping and trying. That's a doctor's job." Vidor's own H.M. Pulham, Esq. is the spiritual companion piece. With Emlyn Williams, Francis L. Sullivan, Mary Clare, Nora Swinburne, Edward Chapman, Athene Seyler, and Felix Aylmer. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |