Distributor: Warner Bros.
Top Billed Actors: Ann Sheridan, Robert Cummings, Ronald Reagan
Won 0 Oscars
Nominated for 3 more:
Outstanding Motion Picture - Warner Bros.
Best Director - Sam Wood
Best Cinematography, Black-and-White - James Wong Howe
Plot: A bunch of messed up stuff happens to the people of a small town but a local psychiatrist is there to save the day. A bunch of even more messed up stuff also can't get through the censors.
Reagan was tied to this movie so much that the film score was played during his inauguration. In fact, this score's relevance goes beyond a president. It's main fanfare theme is said to be the inspiration for John William's theme in Star Wars (1977). If you go to 0:28 in the trailer above, you'll hear the resemblance. But even before Star Wars, the movie-going public demanded sheet music and recordings of the score. I can't blame them as I was thoroughly impressed with Erich Wolfgang Korngold's compositions throughout. Some of it even reminds me of Indiana Jones music and some have drawn similarities to the theme from Top Gun (1986) too. Korngold's brassy and punctuated statements left an everlasting mark on film music, especially when Williams brought the Romantic era film scores back in vogue. It's odd that Korngold wasn't nominated in the Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture category, one that had eighteen nominees. Another person that particularly impresses me in this film is Ann Sheridan. Her performance as the faithful companion to Regan later in the film is my favorite of the ensemble. She's stern when she needs to be but also has opportunities to lay on the melodrama in very convincing ways. Her chemistry with Reagan makes their side story worth it. If I had to choose to watch Sheridan and Regan or the other main romantic duo of Robert Cummings and Betty Field, I would pick the former pair.
And that's one of the issues with the film. It tends to veer off and focus on one set of romantic partners for vast stretches of time rather than interspersing the separate arcs. It does all come together in the end, but the prolonged absences of main characters made me question where the story was headed. I think some of that lies in the watered down adaptation of the racy novel. Homosexuality, incest, sex out of wedlock, and even euthanasia are all topics that are key to the book's story. A lot of side-stepping had to take place for the picture and screenwriter Casey Robinson ended up centering the story on Cummings' quest to save his friends as a psychiatrist whereas I don't think that was the literary goal of the novel. Cummings isn't all that interesting to watch either as he plays the perfect gentleman with always the right thing to say to his elders and to his love interest. I did like how some of the prohibited aspects are still included like how Cummings has to stay over at Reagan's house after he obviously has sex with Field's Cassie (they weren't married!). I also got a very strong gay vibe between the two male leads as well as Sheridan's "tomboy" character. However, I do wish the mental stability of the town doctor was played up a bit more as well as the father/daughter relationship between Claude Rains and Field. Some items navigated the Code and others simply didn't.
Overall, a dark and complex novel lends itself to harrowing melodrama set against an iconic film score from Erich Wolfgang Korngold. This is perhaps Ronald Reagan's best performance opposite an equally impressive Ann Sheridan. The Hays Code holds this back from being an all-time classic.
My Score: 7/10