Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

This movie shows the ease with which a young doctor can lose his ideals when he finds himself in the company of colleagues whose prime motivation is status and material reward. The role of the doctor is performed by Robert Donat, with Rosalind Russell as his wife. The Citadel is directed by King Vidor with a strong supporting cast, particularly the role performed by Ralph Richardson. It is Richardson's accident that brings Donat to his senses as he realizes he has lost the ideals that once motivated him. Movies can entertain or provide escapism but the medium can also say something important. It can give us a dose of social realism such as Bicycle Thieves (the post World War II Italian film) or as in this film, exhort us to improve the human condition.In this movie, medicine is subverted for personal gain and social status. The theme of the movie is not about medicine per se but about values. In this case, the ethics that certain professional people adopt when they make their way in the world. This theme is not new but deserves repeating, no less today than in the 1930's when the movie was made.

Superior drama, effectively recounting Donat's progress from innocent idealism through corrupted morals and back, just in time for the movie climax. Based on a best-selling contemporary novel, the movie plays almost inevitably episodically but the tale is well told in "rise, fall and rise again" fashion, reaching a suitably noble climax as Robert Donat rediscovers his true self and at the same time rekindles the dying love of his wife Rosalind Russell. The contrasts between the poor living conditions of the working class Welsh village he initially serves to the opulence of the high - society aristocrats who seduce his ideals (largely out on the golf - course) are well brought out by director Vidor but above all else he's aided by a top cast on top form. Donat effortlessly moves from youthful high hopes (and spirits!) in the company of Ralph Richardson (especially the drunken comedic scene where they blow up the sewers to ward off a typhoid risk) to lazy disaffectation, in the company of the ever - urbane Rex Harrison with equal elan. Although his role is speechy at times, he is always convincing and believable. The afore - mentioned Messrs Richardson & Harrison show their already established talents in contrasting roles and Russell is youthfully radiant as his supportive wife. Illness was to deprive Donat of making the most of his talents, but just consider the disparate movies he adorned of those he managed - "Goodbye Mr Chips", "The Thirty Nine Steps" and right at the end of his life "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness". That he shines in the artistic company which surrounds him here is further testimony to an underrated talent.

I've seen this film at least 3 times during the last 12 months in the early hours of the morning, when TCM (Turner Classic Movies) have chosen to air it during the wee hours when most sane people are still producing the Z's. And despite seeing it before and knowing the storyline more or less by heart, I have to watch it again and again.I've become something of a Robert Donat fan thanks entirely to TCM. This and other splendid films he made during his all-too-brief lifetime are a trademark of outstanding capability. He died only a couple of years after my own life began so I never knew him in respect of current performances.In this film one can easily imagine the obstacles that a young doctor faced in dealing with "the establishment" during the early 20th century. Sadly, even in the early years of the 21st century "the establishment" still feels it knows best in some quarters.

This film has a lot of enjoyable moments, such as when Manson (Robert Donat) and Denny (Ralph Richardson) drunkenly blow up the sewer that has been the cause of so much misery and death in the village early on.The ending sort of dangles. The powers that be, after Dr. Manson has, with the help of an unlicensed practitioner, saved a little girl's life by collapsing her lung with a new, untried method (she's the daughter of the Italian restaurant's owner who Manson, now a society doctor, had tuned out when telling of her daughter's problem), are looking very seriously to striking the good doctor from the medical register. He and his wife blithely leave the courtroom to face an uncertain future, possible as an unlicensed practitioner himself. But who cares as long as they have each other! Cecil Parker is excellent as the society surgeon who has no more business in an operating room than the man in the moon. I felt like Dr. Manson should have pushed him away and dove in when Denny's life hung in the balance and was lost. Denny had been hit by a car after leaving Manson's posh flat, having fallen off the wagon when he realized his friend had lost his ideals.That was the beginning of Manson regaining his ideals.It's ironic that Donat's character is interested in lung ailments since chronic asthma is was took him. It had been commented on (about another of Donat's movies, I believe) that asthma is treatable now and with today's treatments he would have survived longer. Maybe. Maybe not. Asthma is an unstable enemy. Just when you think you have it under control, it turns around and bites you. True, there are more and better treatments. In Donat's time the standard treatment was adrenaline shots and tedral tablets. But it's still a killer.Hmmm, maybe that's the aspect of the character that attracted him to making the movie.One of the reviews for this movie said that Manson didn't have an affair with a society woman, as he did in the book (which I haven't read). They sure did imply a "relationship" since he stands his wife up for the hysterical (on many levels) society patient. Takes a little more than professional interest in her.