Arrowsmith
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Movie Reviews of Arrowsmith
Movie Review: Book and Movie Both Very Good
Summary: 4 Stars
I have become a fan of Sinclair Lewis over the years and it all began when I read "Arrowsmith". I admit that I was initially befuddled by the book until I came to understand the relationship between Medicine and Science; Money and Research. Into this mix comes a man who knows what he wants to do but is twisted into something else. In the end, his pursuit of his avocation costs him the one he loves the most.
Many years after I read the book, I got a chance to see the movie. I was looking forward to the opportunity because it was directed by my favorite master of the trade, John Ford. Although I noticed some of his usual techniques were missing, I had to acknowledge that Ford did a great job. I thought the best imagery he created was the fog in the pestilent island home. As the leading lady was succoming to an illness, we saw the fog creeping into the open doorway and into the darkness therein. There were other images that I enjoyed but much of the enjoyment was with the acting. I have come to realize that it is no coincindence that Ronald Colman happens to keep showing up in impressive movies. Here he is teamed up with a very young Helen Hayes (how did she manage to skip middle-age and transform from a young actress to en elderly one in her career?). There is a good supporting cast with a few of the Ford stable of supporting character actors. (Did you catch the unbilled Ward Bond playing a cop in an early scene in the movie?) The movie, naturally, skips a lot of the book's details and I'm bothered that they changed the location of the heroine's home town from North Dakota to South Dakota. However, the movie did well to bring out the focal points of the book while finishing in a better dramatic flair.
I found the movie "Arrowsmith" to be a strong picture for its' time just as the book was a strong challenge to its' time as well. There were some aspects that were dated but there were also some aspects that were treated better than Hollwood's usual approach in that era. For example, the work that the doctors did among the Black islanders failed to conjure up the usual embarrassing scene of the overt bigotries of the time. In the end, amidst the grief, there is hope. That is a stock trait of Ford's movies that I was glad to see included.
Movie Review: Much better than I was led to believe
Summary: 4 Stars
Don't let the "professional" editor's review for this DVD stop you. This movie was far from "creaky". The picture quality is beautiful, the camera moves very well for being an early talky, and the plot moves as well. There are also some interesting visual/arty shots in the film that impressed me, and the acting was quite good too, although there were a few scenes that had overdramatic elements. But, I don't find this a problem.
Ronald Colman is, as always, charming; the story and role are good for him, and as I said above, the direction was excellent. So many early talkies ARE stagey and static - this one is not.
One scene that I found really cute was the one where he pulls out a little boy's tooth and remarks to the boy that he "hasn't been making the most of his toothbrushing opportunities".
Get this movie. It comes highly recommended from me as a fan of both Ronald Colman and old films.
Movie Review: Intelligent Medical Drama
Summary: 4 Stars
For starters, "Arrowsmith" was not an ideal project for director John Ford. He doesn't seem to be particularly engaged by the material and his usual flair is lacking in this production. That said, this enterprise is saved by the superb screenplay by Sidney Howard adapted from Sinclair Lewis' novel and an excellent cast. Lewis' tale of an idealistic physician who compromises his principles and his marriage as he rises through the ranks of his profession is told intelligently and compellingly. Ronald Colman, though maybe a little old for the role and a wee British for a Midwestern doctor, is dynamic as Arrowsmith. Helen Hayes does wonders with her role as Arrowsmith's long-suffering wife. On paper there is little substance to her character but Hayes does the most with what she is given. Though made in 1931, this film holds up remarkably well because it's central themes are as relevant today as they were then.Movie Review: Impossible to squeeze Sinclair Lewis' book into a 1931 film
Summary: 3 Stars
This film was actually nominated for four academy awards - cinematography, art direction, adapted screenplay, and best picture. Viewing it today, there are so many somewhat incomplete storylines and messages present, I am somewhat unclear about the director's goal in all of this. Sinclair Lewis' book, on which the film is based, goes into great detail about the tribulations and triumphs of studying to be a doctor and then practicing medicine back in the 1920's. It is just impossible to convey all that goes on in the novel in one 108 minute film. First of all, although young Dr. Arrowsmith comes across as an admirable protagonist who doesn't lose his idealism through all of his experiences, his character development and motivations are just not fleshed out in the film, and thus he is left an unintended mystery. His passion for medical research definitely shines through in Ronald Coleman's performance, but I had many unanswered questions. The film seems to imply that Arrowsmith is attracted to Myrna Loy's character through one scene in particular in the film. Was this intentional? The two have an affair in the novel, but if it is going to be omitted from the film - and it is - what was that one scene doing there? Arrowsmith talks a good game about loving his wife, but he seems to constantly overlook her in his passion to find new cures for diseases. Is he actually taking her for granted, or is this just a common attitude from the past in which wives always took a back seat to their husbands' careers?
There is another whole part of the film that is quite troubling to a modern audience. When Arrowsmith is sent to the Caribbean to help fight the plague by testing his new serum, he is instructed to basically do what today is called a double blind study. He is to inject half the patients with his serum and the other half he is to treat conventionally. Thus, it can be determined whether or not the serum will be effective. When Arrowsmith presents his plan of action to the local plague-ridden residents, the shocked citizenry deny his help "in the name of humanity". However, a local black doctor, Oliver Marchand, tells Arrowsmith that he knows of how he can accomplish his goal - by experimenting on the black residents of the island of course! To me, this was all too reminiscent of the Tuskegee experiments and had a large Ick Factor to it.
I can't grade this film too severely since I have to take into account its year of production, the fact that dialogue had not become that sophisticated yet since talking pictures had only been universally accepted for about two years, and finally that a complex novel is being squeezed into just over an hour and a half. This film's value today is mainly as an example of one of the better transitional era talkies. Dialogue and acting were much more natural than they had been just a year or two prior to this film, but vast improvements, particularly in dialogue and technology, were just a couple of years away.
Movie Review: Style Sans Substance
Summary: 3 Stars
In ARROWSMITH, director John Ford tries mightily to bring to life the novel by Sinclair Lewis about the eternal struggle between idealism and pragmatism. In this, Ford fails to bring to life the memorable drama that is on every page of Lewis' novel. The fault is not Ronald Coleman's as the physician who always places people over profit. Rather it is the herky-jerky script that shifts the setting from one sharply contrasting scene to another with neither believability nor seamless segue. Coleman plays Dr. Martin Arrowsmith right from the start as one who wishes to study medicine so as to become a researcher to find cures for All That Ails Mankind. Fair enough. But no sooner does he say that than he is quite willing to become a country doctor in Montana far from any lab. He brings with him his wife (Helen Hayes), a nurse whom he proposes to on the first date. In short order, he finds a cure for a cattle plague before deciding to move to New York to find work as a researcher in a fancy Upper East Side facility. In the novel, Lewis pictures this facility in the bitterest terms as all that he saw as wrong with modern medicine. Such doctors, Lewis viewed as mercenary and any results of research had to have an immediate payoff. In the film, Ford at least got this right as the facility's publicity director had no problem with labeling a prototype of a serum of Arrowsmith's as a universal panacea.
Most of the movie gives snippets of Arrowsmith's life from country doctor to medical researcher to caring physician in plague torn West Indies. The audience sees clearly enough what happens to Arrowsmith but fails to feel an empathy even during moments of tragedy. When his wife loses her baby, Coleman is strangely detached from the reality of the loss. When she dies of plague in the West Indies, Coleman shows even less feeling as he can do no more than place her lifeless body on the nearest bed. And then there is the Myrna Loy character as Joyce, a recent widow whom Arrowsmith meets in the West Indies. In the novel, they marry only to learn that the idealistic Arrowsmith has no place in the glitzy world of Upper East Side doctoring. In the film, director Ford introduces her clearly as a romantic complication, perhaps to test the fidelity of the true blue Arrowsmith. However, their relation never progresses beyond that of the passing acquaintance. Ultimately, ARROWSMITH is a film that with a tighter script might have emerged as an engaging indictment of the money hungry medical profession. Instead, the indictment fizzles out as what might have been but wasn't.
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