THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA (1958)

In the wake of B’way’s MY FAIR LADY (and its record-shattering movie rights sale) all things George Bernard Shaw become possibilities for big screen adaptation.  SAINT JOAN/’57, the four Ds: DOCTOR’S DILEMMA and DEVIL’S DISCIPLE/’59 plus THE MILLIONAIRESS/’60.  All major flops.  Then, a pause till MY FAIR LADY struck critical and commercial gold on film in 1964 . . . without generating more Shaw films.  His talky debates & lack of action always tricky to pull off.  LADY progenitor PYGMALION/‘38 a rare exception; each tweaked to add warmth to his cold-blooded rationality.  Nothing of the sort here.  Yet, if you can tough it thru the verbal chaff of a stultifying first act, there’s plenty of interest listening to Shaw disagree with himself thru his characters.  (With the usual Shaw trick of giving the best points & cleverest speeches to whomever he thinks is wrong.)  Our ‘dilemma?’  Who deserves to get a chance at a new cure for tuberculosis: a fine dull fellow-doctor or a gifted ne’er-do-well painter without a smidgen of honesty to him . . . other than owning up to his own dishonesty.  The latter, just about perfectly played by Dirk Bogarde which at least makes one of the three principals well cast.  ‘Wife’ Leslie Caron hasn’t the vocal range or style to bring off Shaw’s tricky dialogue; and an acting nonentity going by the name of  John Robinson as the doctor with ‘the cure,’ figuring out whether to help a worthy man or a gifted one, complicated by an interest in Caron, Bogarde’s putative widow.  The relationship, seasoning to Shaw’s lecture, going for naught between these two, leaving only an intellectual puzzle.  Some good support from Alastair Sim, Robert Morley, Alec McCowen & Felix Alymer largely wasted under director Anthony Asquith’s strolling pace even as Bogarde makes the second act work its witty paradox & contrarian logic.  Best for confirmed Shavians, and the patiently curious.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Bogarde’s character might be the bohemian nephew of PYGMALION’s Alfred P. Doolittle.  Described by Henry Higgins as ‘England’s most original thinker.’

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Asquith, who co-directed that superb PYGMALION, followed DILEMMA with Sophia Loren & Peter Sellers miscast in THE MILLIONAIRESS mentioned above.  A Maggie Smith tv film of the play from 1972 much better.      https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/09/pygmalion-1938.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/millionairess-1972.html