As Good As It Gets

Absolutely brilliant

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Abraham Lincoln's assassination is the basis of this interesting film that tries to do justice to a Southern doctor that is accused of abetting the man that killed the President. The story begins in 1865 as the Civil War ended. Abraham Lincoln, one of the most beloved, and hated men in the new republic, appears in the White House balcony to address the troops. He makes a surprise announcement when he asks the band to play "Dixie", something that was meant to be a conciliatory gesture. Lincoln's murder by John Wilkes Booth at the Ford theater, brings Dr. Samuel A. Mudd into the investigation.Dr. Mudd, a Southern doctor, happens to be at home when the fleeing assassin needs the services of a physician to treat his broken leg, the result of having jumped to the stage after killing Mr. Lincoln. The doctor and his wife are dumbfounded when the companion of Booth gives him a fifty dollar bill for a two dollars job. They are quite taken aback, but it is too late to return the money since the men had gone away. The boot that was ripped from Booth surfaces during an investigation being conducted that follows the trail followed Wilkes took to escape the police.Because of the circumstantial evidence, Dr. Mudd is taken prisoner. The trial that ensues condemns the doctor to life in prison, something the real conspirators did not get. His sentence is to be served in the prison at Fort Jefferson, in the Dry Tortugas, off the Florida coast. The jailed Dr. Mudd finds an avowed enemy in the cruel Sgt. Rankin, who vows to make his life miserable. The onset of yellow fever changes things for Dr. Mudd. He is called to assist the sick men. The story ends in a good note as Washington pardons him for his role in containing the outbreak.John Ford joined forces with Nunnally Johnson in a film that, as seen today, still holds the viewer's attention after more than seventy years of having been made. Mr. Ford, perhaps the best director in the history of American cinema, shows why he was a man that understood what the movie going audiences wanted. He treated the material with reverence, as he focuses his attention on a man that for all accounts had nothing to do with the assassination of a US president.Warner Baxter, playing Dr. Mudd, brought a raw intensity to the way his character needed to show. Mr. Baxter had a great role in the falsely accused doctor, as he showed in the film. Gloria Stewart is seen as Mrs. Mudd, a valiant woman who believed in her man's innocence and stuck to her principles. John Carradine made an excellent Sgt. Rankin. Ernest Whitman, Francis McDonald, Fred Kohler, and O.P. Heggie, are featured in the large cast.

In today's police jargon, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd would be referred to as a 'known associate' of presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth. What or how much he knew of Booth and his schemes is still a matter of interpretation. It is certain on that night that Booth and accomplice David Herrold came knocking at his door to mend Booth's broken leg as a result of jumping off the balcony at Ford's Theater after shooting Abraham Lincoln, Mudd had no way of knowing what had just happened.He was acquainted with Booth, it was no accident Booth stopped by that night, he knew where a doctor was. Mudd obfuscated the facts and that might just have earned him the trip to the Dry Tortugas.The Prisoner of Shark Island overlooks these details. What it does not do is overlook the complete disregard for due process. Booth, his confederates in the assassination plot against top government officials, and those like Mudd who got drawn into the orbit of Booth were tried by drumhead military tribunals as is shown. It's also to be remembered that we were five days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Other armies like Joe Johnston's, Richard Taylor's were still in the field. Confederate elected officials like Jefferson Davis were also at large. It was by no means an easy time for the justice system. Abraham Lincoln himself had suspended habeas corpus during the war and Dr. Mudd got caught in that order.Warner Baxter and Gloria Stuart make a fine Dr. and Mrs. Mudd. Baxter articulates well the man caught in a Kafkaesque nightmare. Also note some fine performances that John Ford elicited from Claude Gillingwater as Baxter's unreconstructed rebel father-in-law, Harry Carey, Sr. as the prison commandant, and John Carradine as the stockade sergeant who has a burning hatred for Mudd the man accused of complicity in Lincoln's death. Such was the public opinion of most in the north.The Prisoner of Shark Island also graphically illustrates Mudd's heroism in fighting the yellow fever epidemic in the Dry Tortugas prison. That part is completely factual and did win him a pardon in 1869 from outgoing President Andrew Johnson. That by the way is no accident. Johnson by that time had broken with the Radical Republicans and had escaped removal from office via impeachment by one vote in the Senate. The power to pardon however remains the sole property of the president and I'm sure that was Johnson's way of thumbing his nose at incoming President Ulysses S. Grant. There was no love lost between those two. We've recently seen an example of the abuse of the pardoning power with Bill Clinton's last days in the White House and I'm sure Scooter Libby will get a similar pardon from George W. Bush as he leaves office.Dr. Mudd however really earned his and if you watch The Prisoner of Shark Island, I'm sure you'll agree.

This moving story does have some actuality. One of the interesting details is some legal argument about the place of residence of doctor Mudd. The lawyers argue that if he could be transported from Shark Island, the prison on Dry Tortugas, to a place where normal US legislation is applied, then a writ of habeas corpus could be served and he would go free. Therefore Mudd's supporters launch a failed rescue attempt to that effect. On Dry Tortugas, an island off the Floridy Keys, the prisoner has no chance to appeal for territorial reasons. In my understanding (I am no lawyer, however) this pretty much reflects the Guantanamo situation of today and one just hopes that no doctor Mudds are holed up there and that all open legal questions in that context can be resolved satisfactorily.I am always amazed how outspoken movies of the great Hollywood Studios could be on political issues or social or legal injustice. This movie is an important product of this tradition. The Prisoner of Shark Island is almost an Anti Yankee-movie. The soldiers are uncouth and brutal, the carpet baggers sleazy double talkers. The authorities panic after President Lincoln's assassination. Somebody, anybody has to hang for the crime. And fast. One of the memorable moments of the movie has one of the military judges in charge say something like „we owe it to the people", clearly meaning the enraged mob in the square below. Thinking of who else claimed to fulfill the wishes of „the people" around 1936 this could also be an appeal to legal authorities to serve the written law and not give in to those who shout the loudest.Director John Ford certainly knew how to stir up emotions, some of the pathos might be regarded as slightly overwrought by contemporary viewers. However, The Prisoner of Shark Island certainly is one of the most beautiful and memorable movies of his.

**SPOILERS** A bit inaccurate version of the life of Dr. Samuel Mudd in regards to his knowledge of President Abraham Lincoln's assassin John Wilks Booth. It's been brought out that Dr. Mudd did know Booth before he treated his injured leg after he escaped from the Union troops, during the confusion at the Ford Theater. After he shot and killed Pres. Lincoln on the evening of April 14, 1865.Booth did know and met with Dr. Mudd three different times during social occasions on Nov. 13 Dec. 18 & 23 of 1864 so it wasn't ,like the movie made it out to be, that Dr. Mudd met Booth only after he's escape from the Union Army after shooting Pres. Lincoln. Besides that inaccuracy the rest of the film "The Prisoner of Shark Island" honestly tells the story of the tragic saga behind Dr. Mudd's incarceration in the yellow fever and mosquito infested island prison Fort Jefferson or as it's also known as the notorious Shark Island.Taking in an injured John Wilks Booth and his fellow conspirators David Herold Dr. Mudd treats his broken leg and before you know it the two take off and travel south towards Virgina. Booth's Gunned down a few days later and anyone who had anything to do with him was quickly arrested and sentenced to be hung by a military court with the exception of Dr. Mudd. Dr. Mudd given a life sentence at the infamous Fort Jefferson of the Florida Keys where he's treated worse then the worst criminals on the island for his involvement in the Lincoln assassination which he had nothing to do with.Being a man of medicine Dr. Mudd felt it was his duty as a doctor to treat Booth even though at the time he had no knowledge of his murder of the president. At Shark Island Mudd is treated as an outcast even among his fellow prisoners and after an aborted escape attempt Mudd is thrown into solitary confinement, or the hole, that almost cause him to lose his mind and go insane.After two years at Shark Island the prison population, as well as the military personnel guarding and controlling them, is hit by a plague of Yellow fever that cause the island to be quarantined. Both the inmates and guards are struck down by the hundreds and with no medical man wanting to go on the island to help it's left up to prison inmate Dr. Samuel Mudd to do the job. In the end Dr. Mudd not only saves over 1,000 lives,mostly prisoners regardless of what crimes that they committed, but after four years behind bars Dr. Mudd is given a full and complete pardon from the them President of the United States, Andrew Johnson, on March 8, 1869.Fine performance by Warren Baxter as Dr. Samuel Mudd. There's John Carridine as the vicious Sgt. Rakin who after treating Dr. Mudd with sadistic brutality he in the end repents from what he did to the good doctor after Dr. Mudd saved his life as well as over a thousand others on the mosquito infected isle from Yellow Fever. Dr. Mudd himself got infected by what he called the "Yellow-jacket" that almost ended up killing him as well.Dr. Mudd was a real man of medicine as well as man of kindness as he showed, like in the case of John Wilkes Booth, that he didn't care what a person did even though he had no idea of Booth's actions at the time. He not only treated him but helped anyone else, to the best of his ability, regardless of what they did like the many prisoners that he save from the jaws of death on "Shark Island".