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Russ G @RT78760655 Mar 15 A not awful 50's meller with a somewhat odd casting choice of Robert Mitchum in the lead. I saw this years ago on the TV Late Show; didn't notice then that he was opposite Olivia DeHavilland, sixteen years removed from GWTW. Call it a Chick Flick; the ladies probably dug it with hunky Bobby M. in the lead and the soap-opera elements. Our protagonist is ultimately humbled by events and there's the expected sappy ending. See more Blu B @RT43513976 06/26/2025 It reminds me of a film like The FBI Story and Patch Adams where it takes you through someone wanting to become some sort of profession and tries to mix in personal family/melodrama with mixed results at best. I will say that this does come a bit more close to being Good though compared to those just because this doesn't put the character on a pedastal like a God or feel like it has a politcal agenda weighing it down. It's two movies still though. One is basically a 50's movie equivalent of E.R. or Grey's Anatomy and the other is melodrama of a new doctor arriving in a small town to make a difference. It has a lot to say about the underlying issues of modern medicine and lots of the issues from payments to docs playing God have not aged at all sadly and is strikingly relevant. The problem is it still feels episodic and if you take any of them out it really doesn't lose much story wise. The whole medical school part goes on for over an hour and honestly it probably could've been cut down to 10 minutes or so and lose nothing. The whole relationship with his wife and the affair feels very underdevloped because we spend so much time focusing on critiques and medical situations. But the direction is good, so is the acting and everything else is half decent It's cool seeing medicine in the 50's and Mitchum does a great job in this. Olivia isn't bad but she doesn't have the best chemistry in the world with him. Even though it's obvious the main stars are too old to be medical students the performances are good and make it easy to look past. Once they leave school to it becomes much less an issue in the second half. Music isn't bad either but I wish it was used more and is a bit generic. This feels like 3 hours but it makes perfect sense and it is engaging if a bit repeititive. I questions whether a film was the best medium for something like this rather than a TV series. But it makes perfect sense and is interesting still. It just needed to do a better job tying these medical episodes into character development or get rid of the side stuff like the affair completely. If your a big fan of Kramer as a director or any actors in this than this may be worth checking out. Or if your curious what medicine looked like in the 50's. (More advanced in than I thought personally) But most aren't missing much here. See more 11/15/2016 Soap elevated to excellence by the cast and director. The book from which this was adapted, in one way or another, isn't bad either. See more 10/11/2013 The exceptional cast helps to while away the platitudes and pieties, provided you can accept the likes of Mitchum, Sinatra and Marvin as somewhat wrinkly students. See more 06/04/2013 Despite a stellar cast, this is an ordinary melodrama hamstrung by a mediocre script and dreadful Swedish accents. See more 03/19/2013 A very good heartfelt film with some of the best actor's in the biz. A film worth adding to your collection. See more Read all reviews

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