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Yin and yang of earnestness and satire, both serve the analysis of "the greatest discovery of the age." The 1840s are still the epoch of medicinal pain, the Boston dentist (Joel McCrea) approaches the screaming patient with corkscrew in hand: "Open your mouth and keep your trap shut." W.T.G. Morton, dogged seeker, faded pathfinder. Most elusive anesthesia, the Washington pitch has President Pierce (Porter Hall) tactlessly struck by the irony of soothing the agony of soldiers. ("The government pays for the guns, don't it?") Patents fall through and formulas don't come together, the cantankerous mentor (Julius Tannen) recommends sticking to tooth-yanking but the august surgeon (Harry Carey) is rather more encouraging. "Someday, somebody's going to find something." A deeply personal view of the tragicomedy of success as well as a spoof of Dieterle's Great Man biopics, Preston Sturges' most misunderstood work. Laughing gas tryouts at Harvard, Grady Sutton with swollen jaw inhales deeply and cracks up. ("A good dissonance is like a man," says Charles Ives, the protagonist in need of a test subject for his ether theory is seen on all fours searching for the family pooch before settling on some goldfish.) A mythological name for the breakthrough, naturally the first case is William Demarest, grouchily skeptical at first and then a one-man wrecking crew after unknowingly huffing cleaning fluid. To the end a wife (Betty Field) bewildered and supportive, in old age still hoping for a monument to be named in honor of her forgotten beloved. ("Maybe one hospital someday...") "Mercy versus greed," ultimately resolved at the portals of the surgical amphitheater. "This operation seems to be accompanied by an unusual amount of levity." The relation is to Christmas in July, the exaltation during the opening titles is a wishful reverie. With Louis Jean Heydt, Franklin Pangborn, Edwin Maxwell, Harry Hayden, Torben Meyer, Thurston Hall, J. Farrell MacDonald, and Jimmy Conlin. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |