CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Blucher One of the worst movies I've ever seen

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

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.

calvinnme This film was actually nominated for four academy awards - cinematography, art direction, adapted screenplay, and best picture. Viewing it today, there are so many somewhat incomplete story lines and messages present, I am somewhat unclear about the director's goal in all of this. Sinclair Lewis' book, on which the film is based, goes into great detail about the tribulations and triumphs of studying to be a doctor and then practicing medicine back in the 1920's. It is just impossible to convey all that goes on in the novel in one 108 minute film. First of all, although young Dr. Arrowsmith comes across as an admirable protagonist who doesn't lose his idealism through all of his experiences, his character development and motivations are just not fleshed out in the film, and thus he is left an unintended mystery. His passion for medical research definitely shines through in Ronald Coleman's performance, but I had many unanswered questions. The film seems to imply that Arrowsmith is attracted to Myrna Loy's character through one scene in particular in the film. Was this intentional? The two have an affair in the novel, but if it is going to be omitted from the film - and it is - what was that one scene doing there? Arrowsmith talks a good game about loving his wife, but he seems to constantly overlook her in his passion to find new cures for diseases. Is he actually taking her for granted, or is this just a common attitude from the past in which wives always took a back seat to their husbands' careers? There is another whole part of the film that is quite troubling to a modern audience. When Arrowsmith is sent to the Caribbean to help fight the plague by testing his new serum, he is instructed to basically do what today is called a double blind study. He is to inject half the patients with his serum and the other half he is to treat conventionally. Thus, it can be determined whether or not the serum will be effective. When Arrowsmith presents his plan of action to the local plague-ridden residents, the shocked citizenry deny his help "in the name of humanity". However, a local black doctor, Oliver Marchand, tells Arrowsmith that he knows of how he can accomplish his goal - by experimenting on the black residents of the island of course! To me, this was all too reminiscent of the Tuskegee experiments and had a large Ick Factor to it.I can't grade this film too severely since I have to take into account its year of production, the fact that dialogue had not become that sophisticated yet since talking pictures had only been universally accepted for about two years, and finally that a complex novel is being squeezed into just over an hour and a half. This film's value today is mainly as an example of one of the better transitional era talkies. Dialogue and acting were much more natural than they had been just a year or two prior to this film, but vast improvements, particularly in dialogue and technology, were just a couple of years away.

tonstant viewer Goldwyn put together a lot of fine talent here, but none of it jells.Ronald Colman, Laurence Olivier's idol and one of the screen's most likable actors, is just plain miscast. Helen Hayes projects annoyingly to the audience, stage fashion, rather than letting the camera discover her emotions, as even the young Myrna Loy knows how to do. Richard Bennett is enjoyably over-the-top as Sondelius but A. E. Anson's accent is a deal-breaker as Gottlieb (as if there weren't enough real Middle European actors in Hollywood at the time).Sydney Howard's script is condensed to the point of silliness - the other reviewers here who contrast "Gone With the Wind" as a model of condensation are praising an uncredited Ben Hecht, not Sydney Howard. Ray June's fluid cinematography is beautiful throughout, with more than one shot that would wind up re-used in Ford's "The Searchers" many years later.The story is that Goldwyn hired a bibulous Ford on condition that the director couldn't take one drink during production. Helen Hayes noticed that as the shoot progressed, Ford started discarding pages and then whole scenes, in a race to finish the film and get back to his booze. That may be one more reason that the film is barely coherent.Hey, nobody's perfect all the time.

ecjones1951 If you came in after the credits, you'd have no idea that "Arrowsmith" was directed by 4-time Oscar winner John Ford, adapted by Pulitzer Prize winner Sidney Howard, or based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Sinclair Lewis. Lewis had refused the award. Too bad the cast and crew of "Arrowsmith" didn't follow his example. I've seen better community theater productions of "Antigone." I wish I were kidding.What a mess. This is one Sinclair Lewis novel I haven't read, but it's obvious that entire chapters were crammed into what becomes a ludicrous montage of Dr. Martin Arrowsmith's rise from med student, to country doctor to preeminent medical researcher. My favorite part of this sequence is the first: the 16- or 17-year-old Martin (and here sanity prevails because he is not played by Colman) is poring over "Grey's Anatomy." His mentor tells him a doctor needs a very small library: "Grey's Anatomy," the Holy Bible and Shakepeare. He forgot to mention a script.On the way to the top, he courts Leora Tozer (Helen Hayes) in one day and marries her the next; they move to South Dakota—from where we don't know; wasn't it supposed to be Minnesota?—the next day, blah blah blah. He delivers a baby. Extraordinary. He pulls a child's tooth in a truly bizarre ritual involving a piece of twine and a flaming newspaper. Building on the success of these medical breakthroughs, Our Hero brings a bovine plague to a speedy end—thus gaining the attention of a world-renowned medical laboratory in New York City.Shortly thereafter, I went into the Caribbean jungles with Dr. Arrowsmith to eradicate the bubonic plague, only I never came back. And it wasn't the plague that killed me, but boredom. Rats.Sometimes I wish Ronald Colman had been born around 1906 instead of fifteen years earlier. He was too old for almost every role he played in the sound era. But Hollywood and the public loved him, and he was a superb actor. In the silent era, his aristocratic good looks and unstudied grace allowed Ronald Colman to convincingly play both swashbuckling hero and gentle swain. When the talkies revealed Colman was blessed with a mellifluous voice and clipped British accent, that was the icing on the cake.Oh, well. "Arrowsmith" was a colossal misfire on the part of everyone involved. If I had been Colman, I'd have gently eased my agent into the line in the jungle hut where they were handing out the placebo serum.