I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Thomas Mitchell (Henry) is a philosophy Professor who has been given 6 months to live but things may come to an end sooner if he undergoes any physical exertion. He uses this fact in planning his last few months. He will murder someone for the good of society, someone who is detrimental to the development of mankind. Well, he does his research for a target and picks someone out. Can he change the world through his actions? An interesting story although I wasn't totally convinced by Mitchell in the lead role. He looks more like a drunk tramp than a Professor, he delivers his lines rather too carefully which makes him sound a bit slow in the head, and his whole idea is flawed from the start as he makes a non-sensical jump to the fact that he is immortal. And where's his beard? A much better idea for him would have been to jump straight into bed with art dealer Mona Maris (Ketti). Let her know that he's not looking for commitment and get it on. He made a schoolboy error with her. A casting question – why is Geraldine Fitzgerald who plays the role of "wife" top billed? It doesn't make sense. The best in the cast is Mona Maris and the worst is Willie Best and his racial stereotype.So who would you murder and how would you justify it? I wouldn't go for any of this benefit to society nonsense. I'd pick someone I didn't like, a far more human approach. Check out what is currently going on at that great British Institution which is Crufts. The annual doggy show is immersed in scandal as rivals are poisoning each others dogs. Some sort of competitive murder seems the way to go. And I'm sure some may feel that Tonya Harding didn't quite go far enough with Nancy Kerrigan back on the ice skating circuit in the 1990s.

... which I lay squarely on the shoulders of the production code. Treating audiences like children, the production code insists we all must understand that murder is always wrong, but I just couldn't keep myself from sympathizing with Professor Todhunter (Thomas Mitchell).In the opening minutes of the film we discover that Dr. Todhunter has only a few months to live due to a heart condition, and any undue exertion will kill him. He is a professor of philosophy, but the school doesn't want him to drop dead in class, so they ban him from teaching. He doesn't have enough time left to write his book, so he takes to discussing philosophy with his students posing the question - what would you do if you had less than a year to live? One student says that he would find a person who was not a criminal who could be held accountable by the law, but had no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and kill that person - ridding society of that person's negative impact. At the same time, Todhunter runs across a woman who is completely selfish. She is breaking up the marriage of one of the professor's former students although she does not care for him at all. Her only reason for the affair is that the student is a great painter and she is manipulating him into making copies of masterpieces that she is selling as originals. The student is cracking under the strain of guilt. The student's wife is cracking up under the strain of her husband's affair. The evil woman will not let the student out of their arrangement on threat of going to the police and telling them that the student is the counterfeiter.Todhunter can't believe that such a person has no redeeming virtues so he investigates her. Her mother has disowned her, she abandoned her husband when his luck ran out, and she likewise abandoned her only child in the county orphanage. So one night he enters the evil woman's home unseen, waits until everyone but the woman is gone, and shoots her dead. He figures he'll wait until morning to turn himself in, and he has a prewritten confession in hand. The only problem is this - while the professor slept the police arrested the student who was having the affair with the evil woman for her murder, and they are convinced of his guilt. How does this all work out? Watch and find out.The professor doesn't strike me as a rash guy or a bad guy or a self-important guy, so a tacked on ending is contrived to teach us that "murder is bad". A man is arrested who claims to have become an adherent to the professor's philosophy even though the murder he committed is the stuff of any street criminal against an ordinary citizen - an old man in fact. The final scene - just too moralizing to believe so I'll let you see exactly what happens.Up to the end this was an unusual film on a fascinating topic with interesting characters. It was great to see Thomas Mitchell in the lead playing a role that was out of the ordinary for his filmography, and he was terrific. The woman playing the doomed femme fatale was great too, but I don't remember seeing her in other films. Geraldine Fitzgerald is good in a small role as the student's wife who comes to the professor for help, but she was capable of so much more and Warner Brothers just didn't seem to know what to do with her. I'd highly recommend this film. I'd have given it one more star than I did if not for the obvious moralizing ending.

Thomas Mitchell takes a "Flight from Destiny," in this 1941 film also starring Geraldine Fitzgerald, Jeffrey Lynn, and Mona Maris.Thomas plays a professor with six months to live who is told by his boss that he can't teach any longer at the university. He would like to do something meaningful in his last six months. After giving it some thought and talking to his buddies at his club, he decides to murder someone, someone whom the law can't touch, someone whose loss wouldn't be missed and someone who is a detriment in her world.He learns that there are problems in the marriage of his friends, Betty and Michael Farraway. Michael is a talented artist but hasn't been producing much lately. Professor Todhunter and Betty follow him one night and see him meeting a glamorous woman, Ketti Moret (Maris), an art dealer.Todhunter visits the woman, who denies any interest in Michael other than in his career, and while there, Todhunter admires a valuable painting. When he goes to Michael's studio with Betty, he finds a painting that doesn't look like Michael's work but does look like the old painting in Ketti Moret's house. The professor realizes that she is having Michael replicate the artist's style, and she is selling them as originals. He investigates Moret thoroughly and discovers that she abandoned her husband and daughter, putting her daughter in an orphanage, and doesn't help her mother, who works as a janitor. Todhunter decides that she must die.While somewhat predictable, this is certainly an original story with an excellent performance by Thomas Mitchell. I love the beautiful Mona Maris in anything, and she was wonderful as the amoral, narcissistic Ketti. Geraldine Fitzgerald is lovely but wasted, and Jeffrey Lynn is very good.It's hard to describe this film or story - it's really one you have to see and judge for yourself. In well over 3000 films that I've seen, I've seen just one other with as bizarre a plot, Trouble for Two, from Hollywood's golden era. Well worth a look.

Not even Art for Art's sake can make a philosophy professor change his mind about doing something most people would think more than thirty times about before they pulled a trigger. Thomas Mitchell, one of America's greatest character actors here plays the lead and it is most definitely the role of a lifetime and any other actors of his time would have been pleased to play it. Mitchell, who often played drunks, here plays a very sober professor of philosophy who is absolutely convinced, for the greatest good, he must take another's life. There are a few other entanglements, but this man must convince several others there was a very excellent reason for committing his "crime of the century".This beautiful "B" movie from 1941 is one of the most unusual in theme I have ever seen. It deals with subject matter I was very surprised a small film from a major Hollywood studio would be allowed to deal with. I dare not give anything more away except to say, if it comes anywhere near your viewing area, do not hesitate to watch it. It is that superb!