The Citadel was nominated for Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture. The movie is based on the novel by the same name written by A. J. Cronin. The movie starred Robert Donat as Dr. Charles Manson, Rosalind Russel as Christine Manson, Ralph Richardson as Dr. Phillip Denny, Rex Harrison as Dr. Frederick Lawford, Emlyn Williams as Owen, and Mary Clare as Mrs Orlando.
I really don't know where to start with this movie because after we finished watching the movie, my wife asked me, "Is it me or was that movie all over the place?"
I would tend to agree with her, it was a bit disjointed and all over the place. It is a story about Dr. Charles Manson, who starts office practicing medicine with the innocence of youth who is yet to be jaded by the real world. He begins practicing medicine in Wales in small mining towns. He becomes interested in what he believes is a link between the silica dust in the mines and tuberculosis. He begins to research and experiment with the aid of his wife Christine. Unfortunately, he quickly comes to terms with the fact that the mine that employs him really has little concern for the miners other than their productivity. He leaves Wales for London disillusioned.
He sets up a private practice in London which is unsuccessful. Although one day his luck changes. A woman has passed out in a store and he is summoned to look at her. After slapping her in the face a few times, he calms her hysterics and escorts her home. As he is leaving he runs into an old friend Dr. Lawford. He introduces him to several other Doctors in London and ultimately joins the group in "treating" rich hypochondriacs and builds a very successful practice out of it.
His wife realizes early on what he is doing is not right and probably far from ethical. When she makes mention of it he easily becomes agitated and gets very defensive. A classic case of a guilty conscience. Of course leave it to Hollywood to come up with the happy ending in the face of tragedy. It takes a tragedy to admit the error of his ways and the movie ends with a demonstrative Dr. Manson back to his ideological ways.
Robert Donat was nominated for Best Actor for his portrayal of Dr. Manson. Readers of my blog may remember mention of Donat in my blog on Gone With the Wind. Donat won the Best Actor award that year for his role in Goodbye, Mr. Chips. He did not win for The Citadel though I found his performance to me excellent. Either way back to back Best Actor nominations is nothing to sneeze at. I mentioned in the Gone With the Wind post that Donat's performance in Chips must have been good, because Gable was fantastic. As I have read more it seems my comments are justified. Gable was considered a shoe in for the award. Funny though how conspiracy theories, which are all the rage these days, existed back then. Chips was also an MGM release and their has been a rumour that MGM chief wanted to spread the wealth so he pushed for Donat as Best Actor, given that Gone With the Wind had so many nominations.
Now that has nothing to do with his performance in The Citadel. Which as I mentioned before I thought was excellent. He was particularly strong as the aggrieved doctor. When he became passionate about medicine and what it meant for people. Railing against the abuse and how things get in the way of the true meaning and reason people should practice medicine. Although his best scene is when his guilt shows through when discussion the fee for a surgery that he sat in but did nothing. His wife innocently asks questions but his defensiveness shines through.
Despite his performance he did not win. He was up against the following.
- Charles Boyer as Pepe Le Moko in Algiers
- James Cagney as Rocky Sullivan in Angels With Dirty Faces
- Leslie Howard as Professor Henry Higgins in Pygmallion
- Spencer Tracy as Father Flannagan in Boys Town
Spencer Tracy won his second and final Best Actor Oscar for his role as Father Flannagan. Since we were speaking of back to back nominations, Tracy not only had back to back nominations, but wins as well. He also won in 37 for his role in Captains Courageous. Donat would have to wait until next year. He did not have a long career in the movies for various reasons. He did not like Hollywood and stayed in his native England, he also preferred stage to screen, and finally he died very young because of poor health. He had a very debilitating case of asthma and died very shortly after his final film.
Moving on to the directing category, The Citadel was directed by one of the directing greats, King Vidor. Now I must admit that prior to starting on this little journey of film watching, I had never heard of King Vidor. In the era of Scorcese, Coppola, Speilberg, etc I did not really know much about the early greats. Sure I knew who John Ford was, but then everybody should know who he is. I guess you could make the same argument for Vidor.
King Vidor was nominated five times in the directing category, never winning. His first four nominations came in the first 11 years that the Oscars were given out. He eventually finished his career with five nominations, but with the exception of Lewis Milestone who had three nominations in the same 11 year run as Vidor, nobody else comes close to Vidor's early success.
Vidor was up against the following directors that year.
- Michael Curtiz for Angels with Dirty Faces
- Norman Tourag for Boys Town
- Michael Curtiz for Four Daughters
- Frank Capra for You Can't Take it with You
The third and final nomination for The Citadel was for Best Picture, which was still called Outstanding Production at this time. There were ten nominees this year, but I want to take the time to correct something I said in a much earlier post. Recently they have gone back to ten films for Best Picture and I had stated that they had nominated ten pictures in the past. However, I noticed the error of my comment when I did my post on David Copperfield, there were 12 nominees that year. I am not sure how the number was determined, but it looks as if it hasn't always been 10 either.
- The Adventures of Robin Hood
- Alexanders Rag Time Band
- Boys Town
- Four Daughters
- Grand Illusion
- Jezebel
- Pygmallion
- Test Pilot
- You Can't Take it with You
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