vincentlynch-moonoi There's little question why this film earned an Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Robert Donat), Direction, and Adapted Screenplay. It's an excellent film with Robert Donat in particular providing a superb performance.Donat plays a doctor who goes to work in the coal mining area of Great Britain. He becomes frustrated when the yokels rebel against his rather tame experiments trying to prove that coal dust is what is causing most of their lung problems. As a result, he and his wife (Rosalind Russell) head for London, where the popular thinking is more modern. There he runs into Rex Harrison, a doctor who is catering to the rich set and their many imaginary illnesses. It's lucrative work, but Russell becomes discouraged over her husband's abandonment of his principles. He comes to his senses and saves a child ballet prodigy, only to be accused of assisting an unlicensed doctor. He, however, wins his case and seems to be back on track to be the responsible physician he once was.As I indicated, Robert Donat is excellent here; quite a shame that his acting career was cut short due to his illness. While important to the story, Rosalind Russell's stint here as the wife is clearly secondary; this is Donat's film from beginning to end; nevertheless, she does well. A key player here, who does not get enough screen time, is the wonderful Ralph Richardson as another small town doctor who maintains his principles throughout. Rex Harrison is just right for his part.There was really only one criticism I had of the film -- the ending. I often think films end too abruptly, and this is one of those. With just a few minutes more we could have been treated to "a year later" where he is working hard at a progressive clinic for real sick people. With something like that, I might have considered an "8" for the film, but instead I'll give it a very strong "7".

whpratt1 Dr. Andrew Manson, (Robert Donat) is a new doctor who comes to a mining town for his new position and has a hard time starting out, but he soon becomes accepted by the mine union and he obtains a foot hold in the town. However, the union wanted a doctor who is married, because they are also furnishing a large home. Dr. Andrew had met a young lady who was a teacher and all of a sudden, he asks Christine, (Rosalind Russell) if she will marry him, even though he does not even know her name or anything else about her. Dr. Andrew becomes very interested in the problems that the miner's are having with their lungs and starts to make studies with animals and is even able to write a medical journal on the breathing conditions in the mine. This is a very interesting story and Dr. Andrew has many ups and downs to go though before the end of this film.

bkoganbing The Citadel is a fine and inspirational film about a dedicated young doctor and the hardships he has to overcome to see his destiny and move to fulfill it. A lot of the same ground was covered before in Arrowsmith and would be covered again in Not As A Stranger and then in over a dozen or more medical drama shows on television. Stories about medicine and its practice is a genre we will never tire of.Robert Donat plays the idealistic young doctor who is assigned a number of positions in Great Britain and the story is how he deals with the various situations he encounters. Along the way he picks up a wife in the person of Rosalind Russell. For an American to review this film probably one should have a knowledge of the British health system and remember this would have been before the days of the current health system of socialized medicine. That system was put in before the post World War II Labour government changed things.One of his assignments is a coalmining area in Wales and Donat because of his own integrity and commitment manages to make a whole bunch of enemies and has to leave. His assignment is in what might be described as an HMO run by the coal miner's union. He starts doing research in a chronic cough he notices several of the miners have and upsets a whole lot of applecarts both with labor and management. He also isn't so easy with giving sick slips to malingering workers and they don't come to his defense. Not easy at times to be an idealist.For a while Donat takes an easy road in a wealthy sanitarium that caters to upper class hypochondriacs. Doctors Felix Aylmer and Rex Harrison are getting rich themselves off them. But eventually Donat finds his true calling in research.Rosalind Russell said that working with Donat was a pleasure, but the film itself wasn't. She and Director King Vidor were the only Americans in this film and she and Vidor took a lot of criticism for taking jobs away from British players. Not like she had anything to say about it, MGM loaned her out there. Still she did her job without a trace of a British accent.Besides Aylmer and Harrison other noteworthy British players in the cast are Emlyn Williams and Francis L. Sullivan. Williams is one of the local union heads and Sullivan is a blustering boorish lout of a miner who leads the opposition to Donat's research. All of them do fine jobs and Harrison got his first real notice by American audiences in his role.Because for two generations we Americans have been awash with medical dramas all these situations seem all to familiar to us. That's a jaded point of view. The Citadel is a fine drama and worth seeing.

doc-55 A look at the medical profession today will convince anyone that this narrative of the conflict a sensitive young physician experiences: whether to serve the not-especially-appreciative poor or the hypocond- riac and over-appreciative wealthy, if he caters to their whims. (At the end one wonders how great a difference there is between these two constituencies.) How many medical school graduates today choose to into small-town or rural general practice, as opposed to pursuing lucrative specialist careers? Robert Donat's effective performance is, as usual, understated; while Rosalind Russell easily matches him in a portrayal that makes one regret that she later became typed in comic roles as a result of superb performances in that genre. A supporting cast that includes the youthful Rex Harrison, Emlyn Williams and Ralph Richardson, all early in their careers and all with perfectly formed characteriza- tions, gives the film depth that one might not have anticipated. This is one of those films that makes one regret the loss of the old studio system, which enabled MGM, with its guaranteed bookings, to make a prestige film on a serious social issue with relatively few melodramatic excesses; and to offset probable box office losses by the studio's many box office bonanza romantic, comic or musical star vehicles. And today??