The Doctors Dilemma.

Dirk Bogarde, who puts in a fine performance and ‘brings much needed breath of life to the film’[1], is the best thing about the Anatole de Grunwald adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s 1906 play, The Doctors Dilemma (1958). In it he plays Louis Dubedat an artist of genius but, there's always a but, under his handsomely outward charm is an unpleasant and cruel scoundrel, a bigamist who currently shares his artist garret with his second wife Jennifer Dubedat played by the French actress Leslie Caron. The crux of Shaw’s story involves the recently knighted Sir Colenso Rideon (John Robinson) a recognised expert in his field, who must allocate the final place on his long waiting list for an operation to cure consumption. Will it be the hard working, honest and decent Doctor Blenkinsopp (Michael Gwynn) or the afore mentioned artist? Rideon’s decision is not an easy one as he has become infatuated with the lovely Jennifer Dubedat and bearing in mind whomever he leaves off his list will certainly die! With the unsolicited help of his three rich and empty-headed medical colleges played by Robert Morley, Felix Aylmer and Alastair Sim, Rideon he has to reach a decision and quickly! 

 

Will it be Louis Dubedat who is saved?

I’m not a great admirer of George Bernard Shaw’s verbal wit and I found this adaptation, really no more than a ‘photographed’ play, dry and considerably talky. This pompous costume melodrama seemed out dated even for 1958! The original director was to be Alexander Mackendrick but following disagreements with the films producer’s was replaced by Anthony Asquith, who worked with Bogarde in Libel the year after. Made for the American Studio MGM, who financed and distributed the film, at Borehamwood in Hertfordshire England the filmed flopped in the UK, doing much better in the US. The problem was that the British public felt cheated when they realised that the film was not one of Bogarde’s ‘Doctor’ films ‘they don’t want to pay good money to watch (Bogarde) croaking about TB in an attic’[2] Unsurprisingly the movie has since slid into obscurity – probably for Bogarde completest only?  

---

[1] Nina Hibbin Daily Worker.

[2] John Davis.

Libel

Anthony Asquith, son of Herbert Asquith the Liberal Prime Minister was one of the finest exponents of British literary cinema, an elegant craftsman who when it came to adapting original stage plays for the big screen was held in great esteem. A prime example of this directors work is Libel a 1959 adaptation of a 1935 play of the same name written by Edward Wooll, heard on the radio in 1941 and on BBC television as long ago as 1938. Anatole de Grunwald and Karl Tunberg wrote the films screenplay.

The original story was based at the aftermath of World War 1 but the movie changed this to World War 11. The film has a simple premise, the question of identity, is Sir Mark Loddon, a wealthy, privileged British aristocrat really who he claims to be? It’s when the young Canadian airman Jeffrey Buckenham (Paul Massie) see’s a TV programme on which Loddon and his American wife Lady Maggie (Olivia de Havilland) show Richard Dimbleby around their stately home (actually shot at Woburn Abbey). Buckenham is convinced that Loddon is really Frank Welney, a small time actor who resembles the aristocrat. The three men where prisoners of war and Buckenham was convinced that Mark Loddon had been killed during the attempted escape. Persuading a well-known newspaper to print an article exposing Loddon as a phoney the whole business is taken to court when Lady Maggie convinces her husband to sue both paper and his old war colleague. But Loddon has a problem; he has been suffering periodic spells of amnesia since his return from the war!

 

Olivia de Havilland, Robert Morley and Dirk Bogarde. 

Again we get a fine performance from one of Britain’s greatest actors when Dirk Bogarde plays both Loddon and Welney suggesting the difference between the two characters remarkably well with only a slight difference in hair colouring and speech. Massie is a little wooden as the Canadian and De Havilland looks great in her Christian Dior dresses and has a couple of good scenes. If you look very carefully you will see Millicent Martin in only her second screen role and Robert Shaw in a walk on role as a newspaper photographer. I believe it got mixed reviews at the time of release and I can just remember seeing it with my mother, one scene I can recollect distinctly, gave a wee ten-year-old nightmares. Now there’s nothing to scare anyone any more, but it’s a film that’s well worth revisiting if only for Bogarde’s stand out performance.

A nice publicity shoot of the two main leads.