Deuses de Barro

John Howard goes to medical school, and falls under the thrall of contemptuous, irascible surgeon Akim Tamiroff. He yearns to be a man of science, and is getting to be just like his mentor, when he falls in love with Dorothy Lamour, who was raised a Chinese family. She returns his love, but runs away when Tamiroff tells her she is destroying what could be a great man. Howard quits and goes to China.

It's based on a Lloyd C. Douglas novel. Under the direction of Frank Borzage, the various impulses are personified: the cold but brilliant scientist in Tamiroff, the humane, caring physician in William C. Collier, and so forth. The ending is pure Borzage soap, but it doesn't hit like it had ten years earlier. It's too based in the everyday world, and the performers are not of the rank and ability to bring off the mystical apotheosis that Borzage's best works called for. Still, it is a nice piece of work. Borzage was incapable of doing less, and the performers, including Victor Varconi, Keye Luke, and Gordon Jones are well cast.