Dore Schary hits MGM with a very worthy, painfully liberal look at a Man at War, who is Greedy for Money and Ambitious and Won't Help the Nice Doctor Who Looks After the Poor but when in Europe falls for a nurse Whose Husband Died in China and Whose Child Died and who is a Good Person and he becomes a Good Person even though before the war he was a doctor and...
Oh, look, it's handsomely done. Made with care. It's got stars. Clark Gable, looking old and tired. Lana Turner, who is excellent, even if they keep saying her character's name again. and again and again (we get it "snapshot" is a cute name, we get it).
Anne Baxter is the wife - I assume they wanted Turner for that part but the switch works. John Hodiak is the noble doctor.
Some scenes threaten to be good old trashy fun. -Turner and Gable so for a swim (he's probably too old for this to be fun even if she isn't), Gladys Cooper was Baxter's mother warning her daughter that hubby will root the wife. It doesn't go there though the essential dramatic situation is "will Gable hook up with Turner".
At the end it's kind of touching that Gable confesses all although you laugh when you see Baxter's face of relief that Turner is dead (died off screen... a waste of a good scene).
Hodiak's part feels very underwritten. I kept waiting for him to sleep with Baxter, or die, or turn up in the war, or be played by an elder actor (like why didn't he swap parts with Ray Collins).
Look not a bad movie. Just overly decent.
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