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Wanderlust, a diagnosis so integral that the prologue has covered wagons. A portrait of the artist as physician (Pasteur is concurrent), it moves from New York to South Dakota for the surreal effect of Ronald Colman as a Yankee go-getter. "To add to human knowledge" is the noble goal, sometimes it means pulling a child's rotten tooth and at others it's a quandary of serum and placebo. A rough ride on every front, marriage to the feisty nurse (Helen Hayes) requires a treatment of its own, she asks for "soft music" at the jukebox and gets The William Tell Overture. The sterility of academia and epidemics in the field: "God give me the strength not to trust to God." Prestigious pedigree (Sinclair Lewis novel, Sidney Howard adaptation, Samuel Goldwyn production) for the tale of the roamer balancing experiment and compromise, the protagonist at the close rushing out with microscope under his arm might be John Ford himself with camera in tow. It creaks as template for the Important Men paeans Sturges would later send up (The Great Moment), then flashes to life as an expressionistic plunge with a full Murnau eye. The Caribbean gripped by a bubonic outbreak lends the purgatory view, with raids on warehouses and torches on plantations. ("Scientific soldiers, ja!" exults Richard Bennett as the boisterous Swedish researcher who, for the benefit of Welles, expires mid-soliloquy.) Storms and jagged shadows and temptation from the marooned seductress (Myrna Loy), meanwhile defective test tubes and a forgotten cigarette seal the wife's fate. "To hell with science" yet the mission must press on, the reflections are by Kurosawa (The Quiet Duel) and Ray (Distant Thunder). With A.E. Anson, Clarence Brooks, David Landau, John Qualen, and Ward Bond. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |