John Ford and Will Rogers made three movies together in the mid 1930s. "Steamboat Round the Bend" is a broad comedy dealing with what Joseph Campbell called "creative mythology" -- the need to overthrow old myths in favor of more recent ones. "Judge Priest" showed Will Rogers as an easygoing magistrate with a casual approach to the law and a serious approach to fishing. "Doctor Bull" is probably the least of the three. Rogers is a small-town doctor who we see ministering to his many patients, curbing a typhoid epidemic, curing a paralyzed young man, seeing to it that young girls "in trouble" are properly married, and courting a local widow.
If it doesn't succeed -- and it doesn't -- it's because Ford and the writers couldn't decide what kind of story this was supposed to be and, chiefly, because Will Rogers is miscast.
Rogers began as a stand-up one-man show, twirling a lasso, commenting with gentle and homespun wit on politics. Some of his comments have entered the national Bartlet's. "I never met a man I didn't like." "All I know is what I read in the newspapers." The character of Doctor Bull is not laid back and although Rogers still shuffles and mumbles, the story is more of a medical drama than anything else. Bull is not sentimental or tender. He's gruff, often angry and insulting. It's like fitting a round peg into a square hole.
The medical aspects don't work either. The premarital pregnancies are only intimated, not spelled out. Bull cures the paralyzed kid with an injection of serum that seemed to cure a similarly paralyzed cow. (It's treated as a triumph for Bull.) Nobody involved seemed to care much about the kind of medicine that Bull practiced. He's always being accused of being old fashioned, among other gossip, and in fact he does seem out of it. When he's successful, it's because he seems lucky rather than innovative. Doctor Bovary had more sense. On the whole, the film lacks much of Ford's usual humor, his grasp of character. It's as if everyone were having a good time rather than putting effort into a weak screenplay.
Still, it's nostalgic. Doctors don't make house calls with their black bags anymore. It makes sense, of course. A doctor whose training was expensive, time consuming, and demanding, can find better things to do with his time than drive around from house to house with his bag. If, instead, the patients come to him at his office, he's able to use his time exclusively in practicing medicine. Max Weber called this the "rationalization of labor." It cuts wasted time.
When the paralyzed guy discovers feeling in his legs again, I'm extremely glad that Ford didn't put us through one of those, "Look! I can WALK!" scenes. But there should have been more oomph in the picture somewhere.
If it doesn't succeed -- and it doesn't -- it's because Ford and the writers couldn't decide what kind of story this was supposed to be and, chiefly, because Will Rogers is miscast.
Rogers began as a stand-up one-man show, twirling a lasso, commenting with gentle and homespun wit on politics. Some of his comments have entered the national Bartlet's. "I never met a man I didn't like." "All I know is what I read in the newspapers." The character of Doctor Bull is not laid back and although Rogers still shuffles and mumbles, the story is more of a medical drama than anything else. Bull is not sentimental or tender. He's gruff, often angry and insulting. It's like fitting a round peg into a square hole.
The medical aspects don't work either. The premarital pregnancies are only intimated, not spelled out. Bull cures the paralyzed kid with an injection of serum that seemed to cure a similarly paralyzed cow. (It's treated as a triumph for Bull.) Nobody involved seemed to care much about the kind of medicine that Bull practiced. He's always being accused of being old fashioned, among other gossip, and in fact he does seem out of it. When he's successful, it's because he seems lucky rather than innovative. Doctor Bovary had more sense. On the whole, the film lacks much of Ford's usual humor, his grasp of character. It's as if everyone were having a good time rather than putting effort into a weak screenplay.
Still, it's nostalgic. Doctors don't make house calls with their black bags anymore. It makes sense, of course. A doctor whose training was expensive, time consuming, and demanding, can find better things to do with his time than drive around from house to house with his bag. If, instead, the patients come to him at his office, he's able to use his time exclusively in practicing medicine. Max Weber called this the "rationalization of labor." It cuts wasted time.
When the paralyzed guy discovers feeling in his legs again, I'm extremely glad that Ford didn't put us through one of those, "Look! I can WALK!" scenes. But there should have been more oomph in the picture somewhere.