Just perfect...

Excellent but underrated film

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The student of medical school Martin Arrowsmith (Ronald Colman) dreams on becoming a researcher. He seeks out Professor Max Gottlieb (A.E. Anson) that promises the position when Arrowsmith is an undergraduate doctor. Meanwhile Arrowsmith meets the nurse Leora (Helen Hayes) and they fall in love with each other. When Prof. Gottlieb invites Arrowsmith to work with him in New York, he declines since the salary is not enough to support Leora and him. He marries Leora and becomes a countryside doctor. After a while, the frustrated Arrowsmith decides to move with Leora to New York to work with Gottlieb. Soon he is invited to go to a Caribbean Island where there is an outbreak of bubonic plague to test a serum he has developed in the population and Leora decides to go with him despite the danger. Will Arrowsmith succeed in saving the inhabitants? "Arrowsmith" is a deceptive film directed by John Ford. The story seems to be incomplete missing explanation, for example, about Mrs. Joyce Lanyon, performed by the gorgeous Myrna Loy. The relationship between Arrowsmith and his wife is also underdeveloped. Ronald Colman is too old for the role of a young idealistic doctor. Maybe the viewer that has read the novel may like this film more than one that has never read it. Last but not the least, the Brazilian title is awful. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): "Médico e Amante" ("Doctor and Lover")

I haven't actually read "Arrowsmith", but I can guess the major elements based on the film version.At the time of Arrowsmith, typical medical practice was mainly a primitive venture, outside of surgery and bone-mending. Quacks abounded dealing with disease. Pasteur changed all that by discovering the microbial cause of many diseases, later to be affected dramatically by the discovery of penicillin by Fleming.Medical research has always been at somewhat of disadvantage. The only way to be sure that a remedy for a disease works is to test it on human subjects, but it was considered ethically irresponsible to test blindly on humans. That is why so much of medical research depends now on animal experiments before testing on human volunteers."Arrowsmith" explores this conflict at its epicenter: a doctor who crosses one line from practice into research and another line from attempting to cure to blind testing on humans. This leads to tragic personal consequences for the protagonist in the film. Big medical research gets no love here as the film portrays the research foundation as a heartless, results-oriented, publicity-seeking organization. This is a valid point of view in some circumstances, but it dismisses the great difficulty involved in deriving treatments for disease that are both effective and safe.I was disappointed by Ronald Colman's performance as Dr Arrowsmith. He had daring moments in hitting on Helen Hayes in a hospital corridor, but then had a strangely bloodless romantic relationship with her thereafter, even as he's holding her dead body. Even his relationship with his research, beyond working on a serum to cure the disease affecting the cattle in his North Dakota home, seemed very detached. Helen Hayes had a very innocuous role as Arrowsmith's wife, clinging and not offering much in the way of personal life. A E Anson as Prof. Gottlieb played a stereotypical Hollywood scientist, all rigor and no humanity. Myrna Loy had a throwaway role as a Joyce Lanyon, who was to be Arrowsmith's second wife -- but this segment of the novel was dropped, and for some odd reason the final scene with Loy was never cut, although it should have been.

Arrowsmith (1931) *** (out of 4) John Ford's adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' novel about a young doctor (Ronald Coleman) who constantly fears that he's not as good as everyone says. The doctor keeps struggling with his duties to his profession as well as his duties to his wife (Helen Hayes). I wasn't expecting too much out of this film but was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed it even with all of its flaws. Ford's direction is fairly weak as he never really brings any flair to the material but this is made up with some terrific performances. Coleman steals the film and really delivers all the goods as he's able to show the frustrations of a doctor trying to do the right thing for everyone. Hayes is also very good in her supporting role as is the supporting cast, which includes Richard Bennett, A.E. Anson and Myrna Loy.

I can't think of any other actor from the Golden Age of films who was miscast as many times as he was because of the age factor. So it was with RONALD COLMAN who was already forty by the time he played the idealistic young doctor of ARROWSMITH opposite stage star HELEN HAYES.To his credit, he was still playing romantic leads in the '40s (RANDOM HARVEST) when he was in his fifties--and somehow, audiences accepted him regardless of what I call "the age factor". Here, in ARROWSMITH, it's painfully obvious that he was not the best choice for this title role in a trimmed down version of a Sinclair Lewis novel.Surprisingly, the screenplay is by Sidney Howard, who had no trouble adapting Margaret Mitchell's lengthy GONE WITH THE WIND to the screen, but here seems to be obligated to cut out huge sections of the book to get to the main plot line in a hurry. Possibly, because films in 1931 did not run three hours and forty-five minutes.Whatever, the result is a disjointed screenplay that condenses the story in a way that makes motivations and events incoherent at times. Arrowsmith begins his practice as a rather clumsy country doctor in farm country who develops an interest in serum when a neighbor's cattle become infected. When his serum is a success the doctor and his young wife move to New York where he's to work at a big clinic.Soon he neglects his wife while he buries himself in his work to eradicate bacteria. When an outbreak of bubonic plague breaks out--well, you can see where the plot is going.RONALD COLMAN is earnest and already quite distinguished looking as young Arrowsmith and HELEN HAYES suffers nobly as his neglected wife, infected herself through a careless action by her doctor husband. And toward the end of the story, we get a glimpse of the young and seductive MYRNA LOY in a role that is either underwritten or underwent extensive cuts. Cuts seem obvious in the abrupt ending too.Arrowsmith's experiments in the West Indies bring a conclusion to the story. But sad to say, the film is a relic in almost every sense of the word. Hard to picture John Ford at the helm of this project--even though there is a brief glimpse of Ward Bond (one of his favorite players) in an early scene.Summing up: Nothing deep to say about medicine nor does it work as the story of a dedicated doctor who wants to save lives during an epidemic. And it's certainly not Ronald Colman at his best.