Crisis

The South American setting is promptly established as a film noir street plastered with propaganda posters, inside the edifice is a jai alai match and outside is a time bomb. Vacationing neurosurgeon (Cary Grant) and wife (Paula Raymond), valuable gringos shanghaied from border roadblock to capital palace for a most illustrious subject, Farrago the tyrant (José Ferrer). The removal of a brain tumor is the case at hand, the abducted American could be a forcible healer or a potential executioner. "I try to regard my patients impersonally." "Can you?" "No." Meanwhile, the First Lady (Signe Hasso) makes small talk with the missus: "You are interested in politics, señora?" "Only on election day." Medical ethics during martial law, democracy wielding a scalpel, writerly conceits versus taut lenses in Richard Brooks' directorial debut. Paranoia and megalomania share space with the malignant swelling inside the dictator's cranium, he insists on watching a rehearsal for the operation and grows sweaty as a corkscrew is applied to a mannequin's head. His opposite number is the rebel leader (Gilbert Roland), who scarcely flinches from kidnapping and blackmail for his own cause. The doctor in between gazes pragmatically, anchored by Grant's deft opacity. "If you were a student of history, you'd know your fate beforehand." Withholding of the guitarist's art, decapitation of the despot's monument, the bulletproof limo cracked. Ferrer yields only to his elderly mother, who, in a little joke from the journalist turned filmmaker, remains silent in the middle of every prolix arrangement: "She does not trust words." A beady eye is cast over the regime change at the close, plus ça change... Mankiewicz expands the template in The Quiet American. With Ramon Novarro, Leon Ames, Antonio Moreno, and Vicente Gómez. In black and white.