Not as a Stranger

I'm a general practitioner and I can tell that this kind of doctoring regretfully does not exist anymore. I do not mean the business with the mole which, of course by what we know now, was wrong. I mean that these guys were really general practitioners who did almost everything, leaving almost nothing to specialists.

But that's not really why this movie is good. The character that Mitchum plays is a complicated one but still his motive is to be somebody that matters in this world, to be a genuinely worthy doctor. He doesn't lack heart but he lacks tolerance.

The reason I like this film is however that it describes people who truly care. Tolerance has a danger to slip into permissiveness, especially concerning power and that has happened too much today. With all it's shortcomings, and there are indeed some, the times that are displayed here still were a lot more decent than what we have today and what makes this film especially precious is that you can see the embryo of more evil times to follow if you are attentive enough.

A film to learn from in many ways.

Many have panned Robert Mitchum's performance in this film, but I think that his lack of expression and emotion, other than anger, suits the character very well.

Mitchum's Marsh is a completely self-absorbed individual. He's committed to medicine and can't understand human failings, especially his own. His character's cold demeanor perfectly reflects the fact that Marsh has no outer life. If he often appears robotic, it's largely because he's programmed himself to shut out everything human, ironically in service to humanity.

Of course he's a great doctor, but he's pure hell to work or live with. Bursting with pride, insensitive to the point of cruelty, Marsh is unreachable and, in more than one sense of the term, untouchable. Mitchum conveys all of this very naturally, perhaps because so much of his performance is rooted in the dark world of film noir, where the actor first made his mark. He's a physician from the neck up, but he has the heart of a contract killer. That he heals instead of kills is his patients' good fortune, though of little solace to his friends or his wife.

Although Mitchum's interpretation remains controversial, many of the other performances in `Not as a Stranger' are beyond criticism. Olivia deHavilland, as his suffering spouse, is superb as always. Charles Bickford, an actor who deserves a much greater reputation, is the epitome of a small town doctor. And surprisingly, Broderick Crawford is excellent as a gruff professor of pathology.

On the other hand, Frank Sinatra's pediatrician isn't as strong, though he has some good scenes when he tries to help Mitchum see the error of his ways. Gloria Grahame, unfortunately, is stuck with a seductress role that just as well could have been cut.

There are other weaknesses. George Antheil's score, by way of Wagner and Richard Strauss, is pretty hard to take. The script and direction are uneven. Many scenes are compelling, such as when Crawford literally throws the book at Sinatra or when deHavilland and Mitchum have one of their confrontations. Others fall flat and there is a tendency, typical in most of Stanley Kramer's work, to keep making points at the expense of the story. For example, the med school sequences with Whit Bissell's greedy and unethical Dr Dietrich (interesting choice of name there) cover a darker side of the profession very well. There's really no need for Jesse White, terribly miscast as a lawyer who cozies up to Grahame, to bring up ethical issues much later in the film.

Recommended as an above average melodrama and as an interesting time capsule of mid-50s medicine. (Though I found it hard to believe patients were allowed to smoke in the wards!)

There has been a lot of criticism of Robert Mitchum in this film. I thought he was perfectly cast. I haven't seen this movie since I was a teen, in the 1960s. However, there were three scenes in the movie that moved me so strongly I can see them in my mind's eye all these years later. The first is the emotional scene when Olivia de Havilland can take no more of Mitchum's treatment and tells him to get out. She was so powerful and poignant. The second was when Mitchum was trying to revive Bickford and couldn't. Finally, the scene where he went back home, and de Havilland opened the door and Mitchum just stood there looking at her so pathetically. I just finished watching The Snake Pit and I'm going to go rent Not as a Stranger. She is such an amazing actress!

Olivia deHavilland, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, Gloria Grahame, Broderick Crawford, and Charles Bickford star in "Not as a Stranger," the story of an arrogant young man (Mitchum) and his quest to become a great, godlike doctor. Along the way, he learns something about becoming a human being.

What a cast - Lon Chaney, Jr. even has a minor role as Mitchum's drunken father. Mae Clarke is a nurse. Harry Morgan plays a big eater, Virginia Christine his wife. If you look fast, you'll spot Lee Marvin and also Jerry Paris from "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." Mitchum and Sinatra are old to be medical students - Sinatra was 40 and Mitchum, 38. Mitchum is nevertheless very effective as an arrogant but poor man desperate to become a doctor - so desperate, in fact, that when he finds out that nurse deHavilland has $4,000 in the bank, he romances and marries her. Once out of medical school, he joins a country practice headed by Charles Bickford and meets sexy, lonely Gloria Grahame - and you nearly can see the sparks. Both actors had hot presences, both oozed sex appeal - I would have loved to have seen them in a star teaming instead of a subplot.

This is a very good film - perhaps overly long - but it still holds interest because of the performances and the characters they play. It's very much the story of Mitchum's character and evolution and his marriage to deHavilland. In these days of special effects, a character-driven story is refreshing.

All the performances are good, Sinatra supplying the wisecracks as a loyal friend of Mitchum's and the only one who understands him. There have been comments that he was miscast. There is such a thing as a society doctor, however, and the Sinatra character was on the track, so I didn't find his characterization that unrealistic.

The towering performance, of course, comes from Olivia deHavilland as Kris, a simple Swedish nurse who falls in love with Mitchum and marries him, only to find it isn't much of a relationship. I say "of course" because in my opinion, deHavilland was one of the great actresses of the classic era, capable of playing a wide variety of roles and in different genres. Sweet and gentle as Melanie, plain, in love, and bitter in "The Heiress," a petulant ingénue in "It's Love I'm After," a young beauty in "The Adventures of Robin Hood," elegant but tough in "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte," she's letter-perfect as Kris. She is believable from the time she comes on camera with her unattractive blond hairdo, her accent, her plain ways, and her shyness. As Sinatra points out, she's not doctor's wife material - no parents who belong to a country club, no class - "She should marry a farmer," he says. 38 when the film was made, deHavilland is totally sympathetic as Mitchum criticizes her for not being smart and turns his back on her, not realizing her value as a wife and as a woman.

A very good movie. Recommended.

Stanley Kramer made his directorial debut here, following story of a medical intern who marries for money, later becoming a country doctor with an unhappy love life. Surprisingly involving adaptation of Morton Thompson's novel is both cynical and humorous, and Kramer really excels in the scenes behind hospital doors, particularly in the patient montages. He takes a good while to warm up however, and the actors also struggle getting into character. Robert Mitchum doesn't strike me as the medic type, and neither does Frank Sinatra (cutting up à la Jack Lemmon, giving the film some bounce nevertheless), but Olivia de Havilland does good work in the romance department. Second-half of the picture is more assured, if more routine, but the film is quite entertaining on the whole. **1/2 from ****