This movie is proof that a good director and great actors can still make a dull movie. In "Not As A Stranger," Lucas Marsh (Robert Mitchum) is a university medical student who has plenty of talent and determination to be a doctor, but very little heart. After his drunken father (Lon Chaney) spends his tuition money, Marsh will do anything to stay in medical school. He marries Kristina Hedvigson (Olivia De Havilland), a Scandinavian nurse that he does not love, but who can support his tuition. Marsh becomes a doctor, then moves to a small town called Greenville to work in a local hospital.
Part of the problem with the movie is that Mitchum and his fellow medical students -- played by Frank Sinatra and Lee Marvin -- are too old to be believable as medical students. These are men in their late thirties and early forties, who look as if they should already be in medical practice, if not *teaching* medical classes. I was amazed to see Sinatra in a supporting role, since by this time, he was one of the major leading stars of Hollywood.
Also, Olivia De Havilland is too old and too beautiful to be believable as an old maid nurse who has never married. (Her Swedish accent isn't very believable, either. Nor is it believable that Harry Morgan and Mae Clarke would be old enough to be her parents.) The operating room scenes, though dated, are the best scenes in the movie. The rest of the movie is a by-the-numbers soap opera that hits every last cliché right on the nose. It's like "General Hospital," but with more characters who are actually doctors and nurses and not just hunks, babes, or femme fatales.
There are some unintentionally-funny scenes, such as when Marsh has an affair with Harriet Lang (Gloria Grahame), a young heiress who trains horses. (You can see this affair coming even before Grahame's character appears, over an hour into the movie.) After lustily staring at Lang in a few previous scenes, Marsh encounters her outside a stable. In a nearby corral is a black mare; in the stable stall is a lust-crazed white stallion who is bucking, kicking, whinnying, desperate to join the mare in the corral. Marsh unleashes his passion for Harriet Lang by literally "letting loose the wild horse." The movie has one really well-directed sequence, the final sequence in which Marsh performs an emergency operation. Aside from that, the rest of the movie is a forgettable, by-the-numbers melodrama. Even the title doesn't make any sense. And why did it get an Oscar nomination for Best Sound, of all things?
Part of the problem with the movie is that Mitchum and his fellow medical students -- played by Frank Sinatra and Lee Marvin -- are too old to be believable as medical students. These are men in their late thirties and early forties, who look as if they should already be in medical practice, if not *teaching* medical classes. I was amazed to see Sinatra in a supporting role, since by this time, he was one of the major leading stars of Hollywood.
Also, Olivia De Havilland is too old and too beautiful to be believable as an old maid nurse who has never married. (Her Swedish accent isn't very believable, either. Nor is it believable that Harry Morgan and Mae Clarke would be old enough to be her parents.) The operating room scenes, though dated, are the best scenes in the movie. The rest of the movie is a by-the-numbers soap opera that hits every last cliché right on the nose. It's like "General Hospital," but with more characters who are actually doctors and nurses and not just hunks, babes, or femme fatales.
There are some unintentionally-funny scenes, such as when Marsh has an affair with Harriet Lang (Gloria Grahame), a young heiress who trains horses. (You can see this affair coming even before Grahame's character appears, over an hour into the movie.) After lustily staring at Lang in a few previous scenes, Marsh encounters her outside a stable. In a nearby corral is a black mare; in the stable stall is a lust-crazed white stallion who is bucking, kicking, whinnying, desperate to join the mare in the corral. Marsh unleashes his passion for Harriet Lang by literally "letting loose the wild horse." The movie has one really well-directed sequence, the final sequence in which Marsh performs an emergency operation. Aside from that, the rest of the movie is a forgettable, by-the-numbers melodrama. Even the title doesn't make any sense. And why did it get an Oscar nomination for Best Sound, of all things?