CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

wes-connors I was very confused. What happened to the Doctor on the telephone line? What happened between Mr. Colman and Ms. Loy? I guess this is a case where less is not more. (So, a scene with Colman resisting Loy's advances, and she respecting him for it, was cut?)The acting is a collision of three types: Stage, Silent, and Talking. Some of the camera work was nice... most everything else was way below what you'd expect from even an early talking movie.The doctors in these early films sure drink and smoke a lot... The moral of the story, I guess is that women should not smoke - witness what happens to poor Ms. Hayes! *** Arrowsmith (12/7/31) John Ford ~ Ronald Colman, Helen Hayes, Myrna Loy

schuurmanark I am nearing 30 years old and just now beginning to appreciate old films. I absolutely loved Arrowsmith, cried through many scenes. I thought it was terribly romantic and tragic. I really liked the scene where he sees her scrubbing the floor and asks her out on a date. Then on the date he tells her that she is going to marry him and she pretends that she took him seriously (but seemed to be in shock that he was completely serious). Then throughout their married life it seems like one try after another with his career and then finally he decides to go back into scientific work with his old friend and mentor. Dr. Arrowsmith becomes so engrossed in his studies that he often neglects his wife, who is lonely and alone at home waiting for him. The ending, though tragic, is touching because of the last line that he says. It proves that he really deeply loved his wife...but you'll have to see this one to find out! It will be worth it to all you sappy romantics like me.

tonstant viewer Goldwyn put together a lot of fine talent here, but none of it jells.Ronald Colman, Laurence Olivier's idol and one of the screen's most likable actors, is just plain miscast. Helen Hayes projects annoyingly to the audience, stage fashion, rather than letting the camera discover her emotions, as even the young Myrna Loy knows how to do. Richard Bennett is enjoyably over-the-top as Sondelius but A. E. Anson's accent is a deal-breaker as Gottlieb (as if there weren't enough real Middle European actors in Hollywood at the time).Sydney Howard's script is condensed to the point of silliness - the other reviewers here who contrast "Gone With the Wind" as a model of condensation are praising an uncredited Ben Hecht, not Sydney Howard. Ray June's fluid cinematography is beautiful throughout, with more than one shot that would wind up re-used in Ford's "The Searchers" many years later.The story is that Goldwyn hired a bibulous Ford on condition that the director couldn't take one drink during production. Helen Hayes noticed that as the shoot progressed, Ford started discarding pages and then whole scenes, in a race to finish the film and get back to his booze. That may be one more reason that the film is barely coherent.Hey, nobody's perfect all the time.

bkoganbing The fact that an idealistic medical doctor was the protagonist in Arrowsmith is the reason why John Ford must have been attracted to this story and agreed to film it for Sam Goldwyn.Allegedly it was not a happy collaboration. Two very individualistic men wanted to have their imprimatur on the film. They never worked together on a finished product again, though Ford did start filming The Adventures of Marco Polo for Goldwyn and quit.I read the novel way back in the day when I was in high school and we only get the second half of it. There's a great deal in the book before Ronald Colman as Martin Arrowsmith goes to work for the Research Foundation and A.E. Anson as Max Gottlieb. You miss quite a lot of the character development of Arrowsmith.Of course the plot mostly centers on Colman and his other mentor, Richard Bennett going to a Caribbean Island where there has been an outbreak of plague. Along for the trip is Helen Hayes who is Colman's wife Leora. Colman is there to test a new serum and he's under orders as a researcher to only administer the real stuff to half his patient and a placebo to the others as a control group. This is where the racism of the time kicks in as these human guinea pigs are black, probably the descendants of runaway slaves. There is a black doctor named Marchand in the cast played by Oliver Brooks and it is a rarity among black performers at the time in that the role was hardly servile at all. Brooks seems to go along with the controlled experiment, but he becomes one of many in the cast to meet a tragic end. With some of what came out about the Tuskegee experiments later on Arrowsmith may have been quite on target without knowing it. A harrowing thought.Colman and Hayes are an attractive pair of leads. Myrna Loy has a much abbreviated role in the film as a New York socialite that Colman meets down in the islands. In the book he has an affair with her and marries her later on. You won't see that here.Arrowsmith is a good film though I wish more of Lewis's story got into the final product. But it probably would have run for three hours and films just didn't do that back then.