Arrowsmith (1931)

Directed by John Ford. Starring Ronald Colman, Helen Hayes, Richard Bennett, A.E. Anson, Clarence Brooks, Claude King, Myrna Loy, Alec B. Francis.

Sinclair Lewis’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (an award he declined) becomes an off-the-rack inspirational drama, telling the tale of the idealistic title doctor and his efforts to find a cure for the bubonic plague. Colman is pretty good when not forced into corners by Sidney Howard’s periodically ham-fisted scripting (frequently diverging from the source material); the entanglements of the heart he’s thrust into are particularly unconvincing, declaring that he feels “flat” after marrying Hayes and getting no opportunities to generate sparks in the company of a marooned woman (Loy) with whom it’s implied he has an affair. Commendable for paying a little more attention to the scientific method than the average race-for-the-cure melodrama, as well as a dignified role for a black actor (Brooks) during this early Hollywood period, but this is a prestige picture in name only. Director Ford, hired upon the condition to be sober throughout production, rushed through filming (even cutting several scenes before they were filmed) to rekindle his relationship with the bottle; this may explain away a few instances of rushed transitions and narrative leaps, but Loy’s greatly-reduced role wasn’t his doing—it was a byproduct of the censors who disapproved of onscreen infidelity.

59/100