The Citadel

1938

Drama

4
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 89% · 9 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 72% · 250 ratings
IMDb Rating 7.0/10 10 2484 2.5K

wales doctor mining town

Plot summary

Andrew Manson, a young, idealistic, newly qualified Scottish doctor arrives in Wales takes his first job in a mining town, and begins to wonder at the persistent cough many of the miners have. When his attempts to prove its cause are thwarted, he moves to London. His new practice does badly. But when a friend shows him how to make a lucrative practice from rich hypochondriacs, it will take a great shock to show him what the truth of being a doctor really is.

Director

King Vidor Photo
King Vidor

Top cast

Robert Donat Photo
Robert Donat as Andrew Manson
Rosalind Russell Photo
Rosalind Russell as Christine
Ralph Richardson Photo
Ralph Richardson as Denny
Rex Harrison Photo
Rex Harrison as Dr. Lawford
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
1.02 GB
1280*934
English 2.0
NR
23.976 fps
1 hr 53 min
Seeds 33
1.89 GB
1480*1080
English 2.0
NR
23.976 fps
1 hr 53 min
Seeds 78

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Lejink 8 / 10

A Doc's progress

Reviewed by bkoganbing 8 / 10

Breaching the Citadel

The Citadel is a fine and inspirational film about a dedicated young doctor and the hardships he has to overcome to see his destiny and move to fulfill it. A lot of the same ground was covered before in Arrowsmith and would be covered again in Not As A Stranger and then in over a dozen or more medical drama shows on television. Stories about medicine and its practice is a genre we will never tire of.Robert Donat plays the idealistic young doctor who is assigned a number of positions in Great Britain and the story is how he deals with the various situations he encounters. Along the way he picks up a wife in the person of Rosalind Russell. For an American to review this film probably one should have a knowledge of the British health system and remember this would have been before the days of the current health system of socialized medicine. That system was put in before the post World War II Labour government changed things.One of his assignments is a coalmining area in Wales and Donat because of his own integrity and commitment manages to make a whole bunch of enemies and has to leave. His assignment is in what might be described as an HMO run by the coal miner's union. He starts doing research in a chronic cough he notices several of the miners have and upsets a whole lot of applecarts both with labor and management. He also isn't so easy with giving sick slips to malingering workers and they don't come to his defense. Not easy at times to be an idealist.For a while Donat takes an easy road in a wealthy sanitarium that caters to upper class hypochondriacs. Doctors Felix Aylmer and Rex Harrison are getting rich themselves off them. But eventually Donat finds his true calling in research.Rosalind Russell said that working with Donat was a pleasure, but the film itself wasn't. She and Director King Vidor were the only Americans in this film and she and Vidor took a lot of criticism for taking jobs away from British players. Not like she had anything to say about it, MGM loaned her out there. Still she did her job without a trace of a British accent.Besides Aylmer and Harrison other noteworthy British players in the cast are Emlyn Williams and Francis L. Sullivan. Williams is one of the local union heads and Sullivan is a blustering boorish lout of a miner who leads the opposition to Donat's research. All of them do fine jobs and Harrison got his first real notice by American audiences in his role.Because for two generations we Americans have been awash with medical dramas all these situations seem all to familiar to us. That's a jaded point of view. The Citadel is a fine drama and worth seeing.
Reviewed by bearndahl 6 / 10

Moving drama with some excellent, though uneven, acting.

Very good film from King Vidor with a great look and a mostly excellent cast, take from the classic novel by A Cronin. Robert Donat as Dr. Manson, a highly-principled physician who struggles with the conflicting demands of his profession, provides an uneven central performance. It is sometimes hard to understand his motivations and this is the film's biggest weakness. Rosalind Russell does a fine job as his ever-faithful, often suffering wife. Her performance is perfect, and does provide a moral core to the film. The film wisely avoids a lot of details of the novel that would have muddied up the storyline. (In the book, Dr. Manson has an affair with one of society patients.) The film also boasts some fine performances from a very young Rex Harrison and Ralph Richardson. In fact, Richardson's role as an idealistic, though flawed doctor steals the spotlight every time he is on the screen. The film also has a great look, especially the outdoor scenes of the British villages.
Read more IMDb reviews

2 Comments

Be the first to leave a comment