The Doctor's Dilemma (1958) Reviews

• Shauvian ideas survive romantic adaptation

  eschetic2005-03-28

  Rather too much good solid Shaw has been lost in screenwriter Anatole de Grunwald's attempt to turn a solid and surprisingly funny play about the moral dilemma faced by a man (John Robinson, bearing a striking resemblance to Maurice Evans) over whether to save the life of a brilliant artist who is also a wastrel or a good man who offers far less to posterity into a La Boheme-tinged love triangle between top billed Leslie Caron, Dirk Bogarde (both fine and passionate, as always) and Robinson. Fortunately, the screen comes alive when the quartet of Shaw's doctors are on stage debating morality and science, most especially in the persons of old Shauvian hands like Robert Morley (Andrew Undershaft in the 1941 Pascal film of MAJOR BARBARA) and Felix Aylmer (Cauchon in the 1957 Otto Preminger film and 1966 Caedmon recording of SAINT JOAN). Alistair Sim as a surgery-happy practitioner also carries his share of the comic load, with Robinson (the real lead of the film) bringing up the slightly stuffy rear. Director Anthony Asquith , who helmed the great 1938 film of PYGMALION which won Shaw his Oscar as best screenwriter, never allows the action to drag, brings out the best of Shaw's life lessons ("those who marry happily will marry again") even when Grunwald nearly buries them in stock romantic fumbling and uses the period setting as well as he did in his still definitive 1952 film of Wilde's IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. This ...DILEMMA may not be a great film, but given the first rate cast and handsome production, it's well worth discovering - and lovers of Shaw shouldn't think of missing it.

• Why was it made at all? (re: previous comment)

  danielj_old9992006-05-30

  For heaven's sake - sparkling and witty actors interpreting brilliant Shavian dialogue with exquisite timing, exploring with the greatest imaginable finesse a huge ethical issue which is as timely now as it was then ....I have not seen or read the unedited play so I cannot indulge in comparisons, but it would seem to me that this was a very professional and refined adaptation of a very funny and wise work, which should stimulate the viewer to explore not only Shaw's original, but also all his other brilliant and fearless sashays...and for that matter why not Oscar Wilde, George Gissing, the whole exquisite corpus of the British fin de siecle....why not accept such a film as a great gift, an invitation to broaden one's literary horizons and become aware of a wonderful, lost world of refinement that will never come again? Down with the philistines!!

• Shaw tackles some weighty subjects, but with a dose of comedy

  blanche-22009-10-20

  George Bernard Shaw's play, "The Doctor's Dilemma" is adapted here by Anatole de Grunwald and directed by Anthony Asquith. Asquith has a formidable cast: Leslie Caron, Dirk Bogarde, Alistair Sim, Robert Morley, Felix Aylmer, John Robinson, and Michael Gwynn. Caron plays Mrs. Dubedat, whose artist husband Louis (Bogarde) is dying of tuberculosis. She approaches a doctor, Sir Ridgeon (Robinson) who has a cure for TB but can only treat so many patients. He's very attracted to the lovely Mrs. Dubedat and says that he must meet her husband to see if he's worth saving. Meanwhile, he finds out that a friend of his (Gwynn) is suffering from the same disease. Mrs. Dubedat worships her husband and is blind to his faults, which are many. He hits people up for money that he has no intention of returning, he steals a cigarette case from one of the doctors, and he's a bigamist. The doctors are shocked to learn all of this. On the other hand, he's a great artist. What to do? At the time this play was written, it was somewhat topical, as there was a doctor who thought he had a cure for TB but didn't. Shaw, in his way, pokes holes at the doctors represented here - the surgeon (Morley) who thinks that there's an operation for every condition; the quack (Sim) who blames everything on blood poisoning. A third doctor (Aylmer) is more thoughtful, taking nothing for granted. Shaw was somewhat of a metaphysician, and apparently didn't believe in doctors. He believed that the human system could heal itself. But though this has its comic moments - Dubedat's completely unapologetic attitude about his bigamy, borrowing, and stealing - it does raise questions about the iconic status some people achieve when they die young, and whether, in fact, they're not better off doing so. And what makes a person worth living? His good deeds or his great art? Bogarde is great as usual as the handsome, womanizing rogue, and he and Caron make a beautiful couple. If Caron was trying to prove she was more than a dancer with this film, she certainly did so, in a sympathetic performance. But for a woman without much money, she sure had some beautiful Cecil Beaton costumes. As the film is in color, they're even more eye-popping. The doctors Sim, Morley, and Robinsonare wonderful. "The Doctor's Dilemma" is talky, especially in the beginning, but stick with it. It's not the best adaptation of Shaw for the screen that you'll ever see, but the performances make it worth it, and it's a thought-provoking movie.

• Why is there no DVD?

  gjampol2008-01-17

  I love this film. Alistair Sim and Robert Morley are marvelous as they advocate the various and absurd treatments they'd used on their patient. But I'm appalled that this film isn't available for home viewing, especially when you consider how many crummy films have been released on tape or DVD. Could it be that Shaw's estate has refused to release the distribution rights for home viewing? If so, then someone out there -- perhaps the Criterion Collection -- can convince the copyright holder to relent. "Dilemma" may not be the best adaptation of a Shaw play (I think top honors go to "Pygmalion"), but it catches the play's flavor. The dialog is sharp and witty, and Dirk Bogarde gives another fine performance as the ailing man. This would be a fine addition to any collection.

• Shaw, the Medical Profession, and the Limits of Self-Satisfied Criticism

  theowinthrop2006-11-13

  When one talks of Bernard Shaw's best plays, one thinks of those plays he wrote from MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION (1895) to ST. JOAN (1923), with a nod at THE APPLE CART (1930) and TOO TRUE TO BE GOOD (1932). After 1923 there is a slackening in his creativity - the plays become impossible for one reason or another - in one case a horrifying political time capsule (GENEVA, his valentine to Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin). But some of the great plays of the early days creak a bit today. MAN AND SUPERMAN, his first five hour play (with DON JUAN IN HELL as a play within the play) is not revived too often. The Fabian sayings at the end were dismissed by George Orwell as "crackerjack sayings" in the 1940s. THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA is a similar defective masterpiece today. There is no doubt that the medical profession deserves critical review every decade or so, as Sinclair Lewis and A. J. Cronin demonstrated in the 1920s and 1930s. The fact that doctors can show more interest in making pots of money than in curing the ills of man is constantly in front of us. But Shaw's attack in THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA was something else: the plot involves the age old question of who should live and who should die. Dubedat (Dirk Bogarde) is a great painter, with a devoted wife - but he is a scoundrel. He is dying of tuberculosis, and Mrs. Dubedat (Leslie Caron) goes to see Sir Colonso Ridgeon (John Robinson) to see if he can use his tuberculosis "cure" on her husband. It has gotten good results, and Ridgeon seems willing to use it, but he slowly gets to dislike Dubedat, and begins wondering if his life is worth saving (there are alternative patients to try to help). SPOILER COMING UP: Certainly Dubedat (a bigamist and male chauvinist type) is questionable, if very talented. But as Shaw pursues the matter something else enters the issue that is more personal: Ridgeon finds he is falling in love with Mrs. Dubedat. It is this personal element (kept hidden until the end) that raises the play. But now comes the part that ages it. If you read the long (typically overly long) introduction that accompanies THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA, Shaw was making a commentary on the recent failure of the British surgeon, Sir Almroth Wright, to find a method of eradicating tuberculosis in the London Metropolitan area (THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA was published in 1907). Wright was on the cutting edge of scientific study on tuberculosis, like his German contemporary Robert Koch, developer of tuberculin. Wright tried to convince the public authorities to allow him to inoculate hundreds of people with tuberculin injections and the like. He was certain this would get rid of this great "white death" plague. It didn't work - it produced some interesting statistical data (earning Wright the satiric nickname, "Sir Almost Right"!). But the disease remained as prevalent as ever. Actually it just helped to show the failure of tuberculin as a cure. Shaw the cynical satirist took up this to attack the intellectual pretensions of the medical profession on "curing" disease. If he meant that Wright had jumped to conclusions, Shaw was partly right, but the alternative of just standing around doing nothing when he had the chance seems ridiculous. Shaw goes beyond the tuberculosis issue - he attacks the profession for having "cut-happy" surgeons like Robert Morley or worse, high class quacks like Alistair Sim (he insists blood poisoning is the cause of most of man's ills, due to everyone having a particular sack in their intestines - one that he is lucky enough not to have, so he's safe!). Only the elderly, wise Felix Aylmer is an acceptable doctor to Shaw - he questions everything with a lifetime of healthy skepticism. It is entertaining, until you realize that Shaw would simply have doctors visit you, examine you, tell you what is wrong, and then leave without doing anything for you (except if you are dying they'd make you comfortable). This is hardly what is expected of doctors in any society - people want to be better. Shaw would say that the life force would cure itself (he would keep returning to the life force - making it omnipotent in BACK TO METHUSALEH in the 1920s). That a life force may need support he'd dismiss. One has to remember, Shaw may have read up on Wright's statistical findings, but he probably barely understood them - he was not a scientist, but a social critic and dramatist. A lifetime vegetarian, it is symbolic of the idiocy of his views on medicine that he spent part of his last years defending having to use a beef-liver extract for his health (my God! how could he dare use a doctor's prescription for medicine when he had that life force!) from criticism from other vegetarians about his hypocrisy. Apparently he never chose to notice his hypocrisy either.