My Brother Jonathan

The story revolves around the life of Jonathan Dakers, a small-town doctor. He is training to be a surgeon when his father dies. Due to the resulting financial problems, he cannot continue his training. The story goes briefly into flashback: to 1900. Jonathan and his brother go to a new private school. As soon as they arrive they join a game of cricket, where a young girl Edith (Edie) keeps the score.

We return to the death of his father (in a car accident). It is revealed that the father had misspent Jonathan's inheritance (which was in trust). Jonathan promises his brother Harold that he will still be able to finish his degree at Cambridge University.

He buys a share in Dr. Hammond's general practice in Wednesford, a poor foundry town in the north. He maintains a relationship with Edie, writing to her as she winters in Monte Carlo on the French Riviera. The local cottage hospital refuses him permission to bring his patients there and as he is not a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons also refuse him permission to operate.

Harold tells Jonathan that he loves Edie and is going to marry her. They celebrate together on New Year's Eve 1913/14. Jonathan moves his affections from Edie to Rachel, his assistant. Harold (Hal) joins up at the start of the First World War. He is killed leaving Edie pregnant but unmarried so Jonathan returns to her and marries her to preserve respectability.

When Dakers notes that many patients have been injured in industrial accidents at the foundry, he comes into conflict with its owner Sir Joseph Higgins, and the owner's son-in-law Dr. Craig, who owns the town's competing medical practice. He writes a report criticising the condition of the foundry and buildings the workers live in but Craig, who is also the local Health Officer, deliberately mislays it.

When Dakers performs a life saving tracheotomy on a child with diphtheria, and takes the child to the cottage hospital, he is charged with misconduct, as the hospital charter precludes infectious cases. He is asked to attend a medical tribunal. Jonathan explains he had no choice in order to save the child. He is charged with not reporting a case of diphtheria and operating without permission. Dakers publicly accuses the medical authorities of suppressing health issues in the town and not serving the town. Dakers suggests public subscription to support medical treatment of the poor. The public are very much behind Dakers.

They decide to change the operation of the hospital. The corrupt officials (Higgins and Dr. Craig) resign. As the meeting concludes a siren sounds... there is a big fire at one of the foundries. Craig is injured and Jonathan operates on him and saves his life.

Dr. Hammond meanwhile serves at the birth of Edie's son. However Edie dies soon after, first telling Jonathan to be happy with Rachel.

The story jumps to 1939. Jonathan and Rachel are married. Edie's son is fully grown and in army uniform.

Jonathan Dakers is an aged doctor in the black coal district of the Midlands looking back on his life with many pleasant memories. He and his brother Harold were the sons of a would be poet, who left his family all but ruined. Jonathan could have become a surgeon but was obliged to take on an ordinary practice in the slums, where he gets into a permanent conflict with a corrupt senior physician (admirably played by Stephen Murray) who controls the local hospital. The brothers love the same woman, but Jonathan, who is the first to court and love her, constantly has to put off their engagement for the sake of his plight, while his brother takes care of her instead and makes her pregnant before joining the war in 1914, where he falls in battle. Jonathan marries her to save her from dishonour, but she dies in childbirth, he takes care of his brother's son as if it was his own and marries the daughter of his mentor. The son is never told that his parents are not his real parents, until he decides not to follow his father to become a doctor like him but to instead join the war in 1939. That's where the film begins.

So "My Brother Jonathan" is really the fallen brother's story and view of his brother the doctor, who is eloquently played by Michael Denison in a sustained and gripping performance throughout the film. It has been called Dickensian, and there is indeed a touch of the warm humanity of Dickens colouring this exquisite masterpiece, perhaps the best of all doctor's films, but it also reminds you of A.J.Cronin's many medical novels and is strongly akin to James Hilton's "So Well Remembered" with Trevor Howard as the alcoholic doctor in the same coal district who is always right in his sometimes fatal diagnoses. This film is less dramatic, there is no evil here and no looming tragedy, but it is so much more sincere and appealing in its humanity, sustained throughout by Michael Denison's wholly convincing impersonation of this infinitely sympathetic character of a doctor meeting with constant adversity and hardship by disasters, but who never lets go of his patience nor of his good humour. This is almost a film to adore.

Although not surprising in its plot this film is well made and acted. (With fine film score too) The story is told mainly in flashback by Jonathan Dakers,an ageing doctor to his son who has just come back from war. The old doctor talks about his relationships and also his medical career and how they intertwined. It is the kind of film almost impossible to make these days as it is a story of a decent man who does decent things. Films about ordinary people and their ordinary goodness are difficult to make without being dull or worthy but this film pulls it off.

The acting is solid. You can believe in the idealism of Michael Denison's character. Sterling support is given by Dulcie Gray, Finlay Curry, Ronald Howard, Mary Clare and Stephen Murray. James Robertson Justice appears too briefly though.

There are many good scenes in the film; the boys cricket match, the hospital emergency meeting, the new years eve party. There is an excellent scene where Dr Dakers performs a tracheotomy on a boy. No music in the background, just the laboured breathing of the boy. There is also a touching scene on a hill (shot on location) with Denison and Gray where she quotes AE Houseman, where you can tell they are in love even without them uttering it. Such subtle film making has long gone in British films.

This was a very very late night movie but worthy of a much better time slot. The country Doctor who forsook a potential London surgeon's career for the betterment of his younger brother is so true to life of good people. People who'll never be named Father of the Year but whose ranks are the oil in society. Denison plays a very constrained man, emotionally, in many scenes, but as the reviews before attest, when prompted to let his affections fill the screen he's as adept as any star. The grasping of the business-end of the soot-sodden town are entirely real and just as much in play today when nature meets commerce. The opening scenes allude to the beauty before industry & the storyline nicely parallels this with the grass actually being greener on the other side of the hill. A glimpse into life just so recently gone gives the film social interest as well.

Ran across it by accident. Excellent performances, great plot, learned some historical stuff to boot. Great old drama with a tissue needed now and then but more dramatic and captivating than depressing. Good for a rainy night. Nice to see one of the first performances by Leslie Howard's son Ronald, who went on to do a TV series of Sherlock Holmes. There is some great medical background to be learned in this movie, as well as the conditions in hospitals in the early Twentieth Century. Some great lines about WWI also, and some heartwarming parts that make it endearing. It is a story of two brothers whose familial relationship - trials and tribulations - are the same as many through the centuries.