Le souffle de la vie

John Howard goes to medical school, and falls under the thrall of contemptuous, irascible surgeon Akim Tamiroff. He yearns to be a man of science, and is getting to be just like his mentor, when he falls in love with Dorothy Lamour, who was raised a Chinese family. She returns his love, but runs away when Tamiroff tells her she is destroying what could be a great man. Howard quits and goes to China.

It's based on a Lloyd C. Douglas novel. Under the direction of Frank Borzage, the various impulses are personified: the cold but brilliant scientist in Tamiroff, the humane, caring physician in William C. Collier, and so forth. The ending is pure Borzage soap, but it doesn't hit like it had ten years earlier. It's too based in the everyday world, and the performers are not of the rank and ability to bring off the mystical apotheosis that Borzage's best works called for. Still, it is a nice piece of work. Borzage was incapable of doing less, and the performers, including Victor Varconi, Keye Luke, and Gordon Jones are well cast.

This is a grossly underrated feature by Frank Borzage on the threshold to his last period and before the Second World War, dealing with a young doctor's medical education and development into a real doctor getting his hands thoroughly trained in the horrible mess of the war in China under constant attacks by the Japanese. The contrast between the safe idyllic student years and the war reality is overwhelming. He makes the acquaintance of a young Chinese nurse in America brought up and adopted there, and he meets her again in China: their love story is the main theme of the film. Dorothy Lamour is surprisingly good as the young Chinese student and nurse, but the great character of the film is Akim Tamiroff, in a role of a kind that usually Edward G. Robinson used to play, a grumpy veteran surgeon who usually scolds all his students with bitter sarcasms, but his character undergoes a great change as he also comes to China and find it necessary to reevaluate his entire attitude and position. I have never seen Akim Tamiroff so good. John Howard is all right as the young doctor, and the story is typical of Frank Borzage: outrageous crisis and redemption. It's a great human story well performed and convincingly realized.

Father represents the OLD: The art of the miracle (medical treatment/well-being/health) is practiced in the temples (hospitals) and the masses should visit the temple to receive the miracle.

The Holy Spirit puts the idea in the Son's head that the miracle should not be confined to the temples and be taken to the masses.

The Son is drawn to a MISSION in a remote location by the Holy Spirit where he receives his spiritual/religious/shamanic initiation by sharing his GIFT with the masses.

The Holy Spirit was a mystery to me in its role until recently when I had a revelation that one of the sure-shot sign of its role is to guide the Son into doing what he would never had thought of doing himself AND TO MAKE HIM DO IT ALL BY HIMSELF. You see, A GHOST: only the son can see it and receive guidance from it, but the son is doing all the work himself. Like Tyler Durden in Fight Club.

Here, the role of The Holy Spirit is played by Audrey. Watch this film and do a thought experiment: what if Audrey is Tyler Durden? The revelation doesn't change the story at all. Because all the charitable work is shown to be done by The Son. She just puts the idea in his head... that's all.

And in the end, it's his head where she impresses her presence and revives him AFTER the father acknowledges her role.

A brilliant story!

Frank Borzage is a great and unique director. He always uniquely mixes radical social politics and Christian mysticism. Films like "Seventh Heaven" (1929), "Lilliom" 1930, "A Farewell to Arms" 1932, and many others hook you with socialist realism and then raises you to heaven (sometimes quite literally) with spirituality.

Even if his strange combination of ideas leaves you cold or confused, you will have to admit he brings out great performances in actors and actresses. Here, Akim Tamiroff and Dorothy Lamour give outstanding performances. I believe this is the only serious performance that the great singer and comedian Lamour ever gave. It is a shame that she never got another chance to play a character with such depth.

It was also the only time I ever saw Gordon Jones in a serious role. I remember him mostly from his hilarious work with Abbott and Costello.

This is also one of the few films that presents the pre-WWII Japanese war against China. As that terrible war was erased from common memory after WWII and the Japanese became good guys and the Chinese the bad guys in Hollywood myth/propaganda, this has important historical value.

Frank Borzage directed another odd but spiritual film I happen to like, Strange Cargo.

Based on the novel by Lloyd Douglas, Disputed Passage is equally strange and here, I don't really understand the title.

John Howard plays John Wesley Beaven, a young man studying to be a doctor under the great surgeon, Dr. Forster (Akim Tamiroff). Forster believes in science, with room for nothing else in life. He is not interested in discussions about the soul, miracles, or love. He is cold and dispassionate. Beaven becomes a devotee of his.

Then he meets a white woman, Audrey (Dorothy Lamour) raised and educated in China, who has adopted Chinese customs and dress. He falls in love with her at first sight.

Seeing Beaven's great promise, Dr. Forster interferes, convinces Audrey to return to her native China, impressing upon her that Beaven needs to pursue his career without distractions.

Beaven is devastated and cannot understand why Audrey left. When he finds out the truth, he follows her into the horrors of war torn China. He cannot look at the suffering and walk away, so he stays in a village to help the people. Then tragedy strikes.

This is typical Lloyd Douglas and typical Borzage, a film of lofty ideals, infused with warmth. In any other hands, this would have been a schmaltzy movie, but I found it touching.

I really only knew John Howard from The Philadelphia Story and as Bulldog Drummond, but he was a likable actor and does a good job here.

Tamiroff is in an Edward G. Robinson role, and he beautifully conveys a shell of protective bitterness, hiding a great hurt.

Though Lamour was not playing a Chinese woman, she comes off as one in her look and speech, a woman devoted to her country and helping the war effort. An unusual role for sure.

I can't categorize this anymore than I can Strange Cargo. It has its own special atmosphere.