The odd one out in Preston Sturges' Paramount directing career because it is a serious drama, albeit with comedy moments. It was cut about by the studio so auterists have been forgiving of it more than actually liked it.
I didn't mind it. It is very much of its time and genre, the medical biopic that Warners especially seemed to specialise in. Yet it is still very Sturge - an inventor worried about being ripped off. There is the Sturges stock company (William Demarest, etc), the Sturges slapstick (laughing gas), the hard edged Sturges (politics from the medical union, former partners claiming he's ripped them off), Sturges interests (worried about money, an inventor, a marriage under strain), Sturges sentimentality (deciding to give up money to help a crippled girl not feel pain... this is well done).
Maybe the bits showing what happened to McCrea weren't needed. I have read the original script. The problem with the film the way its structured is it tells this mini story about McCrea leaving the farm and trying to get recognition, then cut to wife Betty Field telling a story about how he died, then going back to the invention. Maybe they just should have shown that bit. The version I watched was 78 minutes.
It has studio benefits: handsome, production design, rich array of character actors. I wasn't wild about Betty Field - she veers from giddy little thing to whining wife to patient wife. It's not much of a part maybe.
Joel McCrea is fine in the lead. He would soon give up non Westerns to purely be in the saddle. There's no Sturges sexiness which might have jazzed things up.
It's interesting, smart. I don't think a full success but I preferred it to Christmas in July.
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