Alias the Doctor

The plot to "Alias the Doctor" is incredibly hard to believe...so it's important you try to suspend your sense of disbelief and just watch the film. If you do so, you'll probably enjoy the movie very much.

Karl (Richard Barthelmess) was adopted by a nice family long ago. But there is someone in the family who is a jerk--Karl's step-brother, Stephan...though Karl inexplicably loves him. The pair go off to medical school and while Karl is at the head of his class, Stephan is more interested in drinking, partying and chasing women...though he somehow manages to pass enough courses to be able to graduate along with Karl.

Ultimately, Stephan's extracurricular behavior leads to disaster. One night, just before graduation, he comes to tell Karl that he was drunk and attacked his girlfriend....injuring her badly. But instead of taking her to the hospital, he operates on her in her apartment!! Now, not surprisingly, she's getting worse and with a bad fever....and Karl goes to try to help.

The girl dies and here is where the film gets a bit stupid. Instead of letting Stephen take his medicine and go to jail, Karl says HE was the one who operated on her and he's sent to prison!! Now I understand Karl has a strong sense of family and obligation to his adopted folks, but this is ridiculous...especially since Stephen ends up drinking himself to death soon after Karl is sent to prison.

Some time passes. Karl returns home and there is an accident outside their home. A child is dying and Karl cannot help but operate on the boy...and saves the boy's life through his great skills. A famous and important doctor arrives later to check on the boy and he's so impressed by Karl's skill, he invites him to work with him...not realizing Karl is not really a doctor. Karl's mother instructs him NOT to tell...and use Stephan's identity to practice medicine.

More years pass.... Karl/Stephen is a brilliant and world famous surgeon. It's odd no one has recognized he's an imposter, isn't it?! He also has a problem with his step-sister. It seems she's fallen for Karl and wants to marry him but since Stephan and Lotti are biological siblings, marry the fake Stephen is out of the question! What's next? See the film. Rest assured...it's quite the soap opera...and things get crazier!!!

While the acting is very good and the story very interesting, it certainly does push the boundaries of common sense! Again...you CAN'T think too much about the plot...just accept it as it is. And, if you can do that, it's a very good and interesting film.

I think the film might have been better had they done two different things. First, Stephen SHOULD have operated on his girlfriend while trying to do an abortion...it would have made more sense. But apparently, even though it is a pre-code film, the studio was reticent to go there. Second, Stephen should have insisted to the police that Karl did it...instead of Karl taking the credit for the botched operation. Then Karl would go to prison after being set up by the brother. It just was tough to believe otherwise.

Overall, it's a very good film with some lovely acting....and a plot that is just hard to believe.

This could be used in a film class to demonstrate how to make a perfect one-hour movie. All the elements combine brilliantly:

• The expressionistic design of Anton Grot

• The "telling" visual style of directors Michael Curtiz and Lloyd Bacon. The final operation alone is as perfectly shot as the shower scene in "Psycho."

• The acting. Richard Barthelmess shows why he was the best pre-Code actor; Lucile LaVerne is a revelation to me; and everyone else in smaller parts does a bang-up job.

Also interesting as a display of state-of-the-art medicine in the early 1930's.

They don't do melodramas such as this one anymore.Had Sirk seen it in the fifties,he would perhaps have thought of a remake .There's everything in this short movie (hardly more than an hour):two brothers,both students, one of them studying day after day to get his diploma,the other one wasting his time with alcohol and semi-whores .Both come from the country,but only the "bad" boy is the true son of the peasant mother who dreams of a better life for her son(s).All that follows is melodrama ,only melodrama and nothing but melodrama:the good boy unfairly thrown into jail ,imposture (but do not panic ,for good reasons)the good doctor who cures the poor for peanuts and charges the wealthy outrageously ,who is a saint in a hospital ,but who's got secrets to conceal.The only ambiguous character is the mother:does she urge his son to take his brother's name for the sake of suffering humanity or for personal ambition? Probably both.

Best scene:Barthelmess ,screaming in front of the medical board :" let me operate her!She's my mother! don't be inhuman! I'm the only one she puts her trust in!".If you hold back your tears ,you do not like melodramas.I do love them.Michael Curtiz wanted to be John M.Stahl and he pulled it off brilliantly.

Yes, whilst investigating whether Karl is actually a doctor, the coroner definitely asks him if he's a sturgeon. Fishy faux pas besides, this is better than you might think - just about.

It is however not a good film. In addition to having a ridiculously unrealistic story, the acting is terrible. You can't blame Michael Curtiz and you can't even blame Richard Barthelmess - it's just one of those consequences of churning out films on a production line. Curtiz was one of the greats but this was one of those times where he'd just turn up at Warners at nine o'clock to find out what picture he had to direct that day. Not too much thought had gone into this, it was just his 'nine to five' job. There are however some signs that this is made by Curtiz particularly the magical flowing fluidity of the camera. He made this visually very appealing - a shame about the acting though.

Maybe it was because he couldn't believe in his character (no sane person could) but Richard Barthelmess sleepwalks his way through this. He was absolutely brilliant in HEROES FOR SALE so he certainly knew how to act but you'd never guess from this. Neither would you think that anyone else in the cast were proper actors - they all seem to want to be somewhere else.

Despite the general rubbishness of this picture, it's weirdly watchable and because it's just so absurd, it's almost enjoyable.

Richard barthelmess and norman foster are the brenner brothers. Karl is hard working, successful med student, while stephan is a loafer, and doesn't take things seriously. When stephan injures his girlfriend, and performs a procedure, karl takes the blame. Bad things happen, good things happen. More bad decisions. Not sure exactly what the lesson here is... karl keeps making wrong decisions, and has to live with those bad choices. According to the trivia section, there was more risque material (for the time period) in the original story, some of which was removed from the finished script. I get the idea that so much was removed, that the remaining story isn't as cohesive as it might have been. It's okay, but i feel like they ran out of film, or money, or time.. it ends so abruptly. We get a quick glimpse of how things turn out for karl, but we skipped a lot of steps to get there. Directed by michael curtiz. Based on the play by imre foldes. Imdb also shows uncredited direction by lloyd bacon; multiple directors could have added to the strange ending.