The Great Moment (1944)

Director:

Preston Sturges

Writers:

René Fülöp-Miller (book)
Preston Sturges (writer)

Release Date:

6 September 1944 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Plot:

In the winter of 1868, Eben Frost goes to a Boston pawnshop and redeems a silver medal, inscribed to "Dr...

Plot Keywords:

Dentist | Anesthesia | Medical Discovery | Franklin Pierce | Writer Director

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Joel McCrea	...	William Thomas Green Morton
Betty Field	...	Elizabeth Morton
Harry Carey	...	Prof. Warren
William Demarest	...	Eben Frost
Louis Jean Heydt	...	Dr. Horace Wells
Julius Tannen	...	Dr. Charles Jackson (as Julian Tannen)
Edwin Maxwell	...	Vice-President of Medical Society
Porter Hall	...	President Franklin Pierce
Franklin Pangborn	...	Dr. Heywood
Grady Sutton	...	Homer Quimby
Donivee Lee	...	Betty Morton
Harry Hayden	...	Judge Shipman
Torben Meyer	...	Dr. Dahlmeyer
Victor Potel	...	First Dental Patient (as Vic Potel)
Thurston Hall	...	Senator Borland

Runtime:

83 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Mirrophonic Recording)

Certification:

USA:Passed (National Board of Review) | USA:Approved (PCA #8352) | Sweden:15 | UK:PG (re-rating) (2005) | UK:A (original rating)

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

Originally a much more serious film. After picking up some confused reviews Paramount insisted that it be recut.

Quotes:

Elizabeth Morton: He's going to be a dentist!
[weeps on her mother's shoulder]
Mrs. Whitman: Oh, and he seemed such a nice young man.

Not the film Preston Sturges envisioned

For those who have seen and enjoyed the terrific farce comedies made in the early '40s by the brilliant writer-director Preston Sturges this movie may come as a bewildering disappointment. It's a strangely downbeat biographical film about an obscure Boston dentist, William Morton, who discovered the anesthetic use of ether for surgery in the mid-nineteenth century. Morton, we're told, was falsely accused of plagiarizing his research, ruined his health defending his reputation, and died young, broke and forgotten. Right off the bat you know you're not in traditional Sturges territory.

In the period before this film was made the unexpected popularity of Warner Brothers' biographical dramas such as THE STORY OF LOUIS PASTEUR and DR. EHRLICH'S MAGIC BULLET had inspired the other studios to make similar dramas based on the lives of Thomas Edison, Madame Curie, Alexander Graham Bell, etc., but these tales of medical and scientific advance were also upbeat stories of successful, rewarded endeavor. Sturges, for some reason, was drawn to a story in which the protagonist was wronged and the bad guys won, yet he also wanted to experiment with chronology and end the film on a high note by circling back in time to Morton's "great moment" of triumph, before his victory slipped away. The director fought pitched battles with his bosses at Paramount to make the film his way, despite the front office's concerns over what wartime audiences preferred (not unlike the battle between Orson Welles and RKO over THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, waged at around the same time). Paramount won, the movie was shelved for two years, and then only released in a heavily-altered form after Sturges had quit the studio. Sturges' cut of the film no longer exists.

So, the movie we see today under the title THE GREAT MOMENT is not the one Preston Sturges made. For starters, he wanted to title his film after the book from which he derived the story, TRIUMPH OVER PAIN, and when the studio didn't like that he came up with GREAT WITHOUT GLORY, but in the end they gave it the nondescript title it now bears. Scenes were cut, and the sequence of events was rearranged to fit a more traditional pattern. Those interested in learning what the author actually intended can read his original screenplay in a published collection "Four More Screenplays by Preston Sturges," and you'll find a better piece of work than what's left on screen, but although it's an interesting read I have my doubts about whether the project could've ever been a satisfying film. Still, Sturges' cut would have at least been the coherent expression of his vision, instead of fragments rearranged by studio functionaries. As it stands, what's left of THE GREAT MOMENT is odd and erratic, though some of its problems are inherent in the concept while others rest in Sturges' eccentric casting choices, which were not imposed on him.

Dr. Morton, the protagonist, is never established as a genuinely dimensional character, and although Joel McCrea is as likable as ever he seems to be struggling to breathe life into his role. His (and Morton's) likability is put to a severe test in the scene when the doctor comes home tipsy late one night and attempts to experiment on his own dog. On the plus side, there's a sharp performance by character actor Julius Tannen as Morton's former professor, while veteran Harry Carey is memorable as a surgeon who comes to believe in Morton in a moving, climactic scene. But by that point the tone of the story has undergone several strange shifts: in the interest of lightening things up, I suppose, Sturges inserted comic interludes with his familiar stock characters, notably William Demarest, but these scenes are more jarring than funny. Demarest offers a spirited turn as a patient named Eben Frost whom Morton uses as a human guinea pig, but when Frost repeats the anecdote again and again ("it was the night of September 30. I was in excruciating pain . . .") the running gag grows wearisome. The central concern here, after all, is the intense pain people experienced during surgery before anesthetics were introduced, and contemplating this reality makes the humor ring hollow.

It was bold of Preston Sturges to tackle this project instead of playing it safe by making another crowd-pleasing comedy, but the battle with Paramount damaged his career and ultimately drove him from Hollywood entirely. The film available today is not the one Preston Sturges intended us to see, so he shouldn't be judged too harshly for THE GREAT MOMENT, but one wishes that he'd been more self-protective, even allowing the front office to talk him out of making this film-- or at least postponing it --perhaps sustaining his winning streak as a master of sophisticated comedy just a little longer.