Claudio Carvalho 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")

disinterested_spectator This review is actually more about the novel on which this movie is based than on the movie itself. Normally, that is not the way to review a movie. However, the movie is better than the novel, because there is an absurd event that is described in the novel that the movie wisely, or perhaps fortuitously, left out. For better or worse, I will discuss that event.In the novel, Martin Arrowsmith becomes engaged to a woman named Madeleine. During the summer, Martin goes Canada, where he meet a nurse named Leora, proposes to her, and she accepts. But Martin is still not sure which woman he wants to marry. So, he invites both of them to have lunch with him, and when they arrive, he announces that he is engaged to both of them, and he will let them decide whom he will marry. Madeleine leaves in a huff, but Leora stays and cinches the engagement.When I reached this point in the novel, I threw it aside in disgust. It was one of the stupidest things I had ever read, especially in a well-known novel by an otherwise good author. I had no interest in reading a novel about a man who is that ridiculous. I would say the same about Leora, since any self-respecting woman would do what Madeleine did, which is to get up and leave. But some women are just desperate to get married, and that might explain her willingness to marry Martin, the lunch date notwithstanding. It was the better part of a year before I could bring myself to finish the novel.Years later, the movie turned up on television, and I remember wondering to myself how the movie was going to handle this business with the two women. I was pleased to see that the Madeleine character was not in the movie, thereby eliminating the scene that caused me to despise the novel. As for the rest of the story, Martin is interested in medical research. In testing a new medicine, the standard procedure is to have a control group that gets a placebo to compare with the group that gets the experimental medicine. That way the researchers can tell whether the medicine makes a difference, and whether there are side effects. This is especially emphasized in the novel, where the students are portrayed as being obsessed with controls.When the bubonic plague hits the West Indies, Martin decides to go there and try out his new serum. This requires the use of a control group. But if the serum is effective, this will mean that most of those in the control group will die on account of having only received a placebo. He ends up giving the serum to everyone. Martin's humanity triumphs over his desire to establish the efficacy of the serum.As the movie came to an end, I suddenly realized the point of the lunch date with two fiancées. Madeleine was essentially acting as a control for Leora. By comparing Madeleine's reaction with Leora's, Martin was able to assess Leora's love for him by contrasting it with Madeleine's. The idea was to show just how obsessed Martin was with the need for controls, that he would even try to apply it to love and marriage.That may have been the idea, but it is still absurd. And it is unnecessary. A man will typically have enough experience with women in general to be able to decide whether he should marry one woman in particular. Every woman he has ever dated is a control or sorts. Likewise, a woman will have had enough experience with men to know that if a man she is engaged to turns out to also be engaged to someone else, she should run, not walk, to the nearest exit.It may be that Sidney Howard, the man who wrote the screenplay, left Madeleine out of the movie for the simple reason that most movie versions leave stuff out that was in the novel. But I like to believe that Howard thought the lunch date with the two fiancées was as preposterous as I did, and he mercifully gave it the ax.

museumofdave The kind of a movie they don't make any more, and probably couldn't and possibly shouldn't; being from 1931, it's fairly primitive in some ways, but has excellent production values and a prestige cast for the period--silent star Ronald Colman is perfectly suited as the dedicated doctor who wants so desperately to succeed in helping humanity, Helen Hayes poignantly overacting (as she so often did) as his patient helpmate; Colman's polished diction and English good looks convince the viewer of his sincerity in the face of institutional insensitivity, but the script based on the Sinclair Lewis novel tends to bog down in talk, attempting to please all the folks at the time who read the book. There was a time when movies did their best to build positive images of human beings doing their best, and this is one of those films--it does not date well, but is worth watching because of Colman--as a bonus, Myrna Loy gets to vamp a wee bit as "the other woman," and Ward Bond pokes his nose in as a cop.

dglink Although the film has not aged well, "Arrowsmith" was well regarded when it was released and garnered four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture. Perhaps in those early days of sound, competent use of the camera and decent recording equipment were regarded as high values that merited praise. However, with the exception of some occasionally striking cinematography by Ray June, this John Ford adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel is choppy, unevenly acted, and betrays its age.Later in the 1930's, Sidney Howard adapted the sprawling historical novel "Gone with the Wind" into a fine screenplay that left viewers with the feeling that they had seen the entire book on screen. However, his adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize Winning "Arrowsmith" omits the core message of the novel and rushes through events in the life of Dr. Martin Arrowsmith in brief vignettes that leave viewers confused. Characters appear and disappear, decisions and moves are made without deliberation or motivation, and Arrowsmith himself comes off as a shallow individual with little regard for either those he supposedly loves or those he supposedly has dedicated his life to saving.Ronald Colman is generally a fine actor, and his idealism in "Lost Horizon" appeared genuine. However, Colman's suggested idealistic behavior in "Arrowsmith" is not convincing, despite a few effective scenes towards the end of the film. Helen Hayes has a few good scenes as the doctor's wife, although Myrna Loy has little to do but look seductive, which she does quite well.Unfortunately, the scenes in the Caribbean seem demeaning to the characters, and a local doctor's willingness to allow what is effectively experimentation on his fellow countrymen borders on the criminal. However, these attitudes were considered the norm when the film was made and should be viewed in the context of the period. Although most films seem far too long, "Arrowsmith" is much too short to convey the canvas that Lewis painted in his novel. Almost like a Clift Notes version of the book, John Ford's "Arrowsmith" disappoints, especially when the talent expended on its production is considered.