Director: King Vidor
Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Top Billed Actors: Robert Donat, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Richardson
Won 0 Oscars
Nominated for 4 more:
Outstanding Production - Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Best Director - King Vidor
Best Actor - Robert Donat
Best Screenplay - Ian Dalrymple, Elizabeth Hill and Frank Wead
Plot: A doctor is all for helping everyone in need, even if that means butting up against the medical community - all until he gets some money from a rich blonde; his wif is just along for the ride.
Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Top Billed Actors: Robert Donat, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Richardson
Won 0 Oscars
Nominated for 4 more:
Outstanding Production - Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Best Director - King Vidor
Best Actor - Robert Donat
Best Screenplay - Ian Dalrymple, Elizabeth Hill and Frank Wead
Plot: A doctor is all for helping everyone in need, even if that means butting up against the medical community - all until he gets some money from a rich blonde; his wif is just along for the ride.
King Vidor chugs along with The Citadel (1938), his fourth Best Director nomination. His film also earned a couple of other prestigious honors outside of the four nominations it received at the 11th Academy Awards. It was selected as the top film of the National Board of Review's Top Ten of 1938 list as well as the New York Film Critics Circle Best Picture. This is also technically a foreign film as although Vidor and actress Rosalind Russell was American, the production and everyone else involved was British. This was at a time the British government and trade unions had placed restrictions designed to extract a portion of the successful American movie exports to the British Isles. M-G-M, as an olive branch of sorts, agreed to hire British actors as cast members for The Citadel and provide generous compensation for the picture. Robert Donat earned his first Oscar nomination as a result and he would go on to win the Best Actor statuette the following year.
The screenplay was also nominated and this is one of the most solid aspect of the film for me. The story overtly demonstrates the trappings of for-profit doctors not working in the best interests of their patients and the difficulties that people like Donat's Dr. Manson have when trying to make improvements in the field. The script is chock full of moments that highlight this such as the blowback Dr. Manson receives from his peers when trying to study tuberculosis, the inclusion of medicine that is effective solely in a placebo manner, and many more times that medical improvements butt up against the industrial norms. The way the story is structured in a clear three act structure (divided in distinct locations that Dr. Manson lives) allows a natural progression of the narrative and shows an ironic rise to the top once ethics are thrown to the wind.
Although I like the overall screenplay, there are a few details I didn't care for, the major one being Russell's Christine as the wife. Her one-note performance and her character's existence as just a warm body sort of infuriates me. Dr. Manson, without even knowing her name, asks her to marry him simply so he can get a new job. She has to quit her job teaching, which she just explained how much she enjoys, to run off with him and be a housewife. Sure, she becomes his lab assistant for a short while later, but she is soon relegated to idle in the home before long. She agrees with Dr. Manson every step of the way and provides hardly any dramatic stakes to the proceedings. There's a sequence in London in which they go out to eat and Dr. Manson has to leave for a house call. He meets an old doctor friend and is convinced to go somewhere else, essentially leaving his wife alone at the restaurant. This is a turning point in the film but it just angers me when Christine is perfectly fine with the doctor coming home late after this ordeal. Perhaps the screenplay isn't one of the most solid aspects... The acting is a bit shaky at times as well. Donat has an odd tendency to be riled up from a standstill. He will be talking normally in one instant and in the next, he's yelling at the top of his lungs. I just didn't buy his passionate outbursts aside from his big reprimand to the medical board at the conclusion of the film.
Overall, a well-structured narrative gives way to undeveloped characters and uneven acting. If you want a story on historical doctors that had to fight the medical norms of the day, you would be wise to turn to The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936) instead.
My Score: 6/10
The screenplay was also nominated and this is one of the most solid aspect of the film for me. The story overtly demonstrates the trappings of for-profit doctors not working in the best interests of their patients and the difficulties that people like Donat's Dr. Manson have when trying to make improvements in the field. The script is chock full of moments that highlight this such as the blowback Dr. Manson receives from his peers when trying to study tuberculosis, the inclusion of medicine that is effective solely in a placebo manner, and many more times that medical improvements butt up against the industrial norms. The way the story is structured in a clear three act structure (divided in distinct locations that Dr. Manson lives) allows a natural progression of the narrative and shows an ironic rise to the top once ethics are thrown to the wind.
Although I like the overall screenplay, there are a few details I didn't care for, the major one being Russell's Christine as the wife. Her one-note performance and her character's existence as just a warm body sort of infuriates me. Dr. Manson, without even knowing her name, asks her to marry him simply so he can get a new job. She has to quit her job teaching, which she just explained how much she enjoys, to run off with him and be a housewife. Sure, she becomes his lab assistant for a short while later, but she is soon relegated to idle in the home before long. She agrees with Dr. Manson every step of the way and provides hardly any dramatic stakes to the proceedings. There's a sequence in London in which they go out to eat and Dr. Manson has to leave for a house call. He meets an old doctor friend and is convinced to go somewhere else, essentially leaving his wife alone at the restaurant. This is a turning point in the film but it just angers me when Christine is perfectly fine with the doctor coming home late after this ordeal. Perhaps the screenplay isn't one of the most solid aspects... The acting is a bit shaky at times as well. Donat has an odd tendency to be riled up from a standstill. He will be talking normally in one instant and in the next, he's yelling at the top of his lungs. I just didn't buy his passionate outbursts aside from his big reprimand to the medical board at the conclusion of the film.
Overall, a well-structured narrative gives way to undeveloped characters and uneven acting. If you want a story on historical doctors that had to fight the medical norms of the day, you would be wise to turn to The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936) instead.
My Score: 6/10