The Great Moment

Everybody else seems to think there's a lot wrong with this film, but I rather liked it. THE GREAT MOMENT (1944) sees Preston Sturges doing something a little different from the screwy comedies that he's known for. The movie is not a comedy, first of all. It's a more serious Sturges film about a real historical figure. It's the story of the discovery of anesthesia, which would revolutionize medical practice by allowing for painless surgeries. I thought it was very interesting.

Joel McCrea plays W.T.G. Morton, the dentist and amateur scientist who experiments with the use of ether vapor to dull the senses. Ultimately he must share his discovery with the world for the benefit of all mankind, rather than exploit his secret for profit.

The flick breezes by at 81 minutes, so it doesn't delve into the protagonist's personal life as much as other biopics. Sturges puts his own spin on the Hollywood biopic with his flair for comedy still shining through, particularly in William Demarest's scenes. Under Sturges's direction, even the scenes of Morton reading a reference book manage to capture the thrill of scientific discovery and there's some interesting non-linear storytelling early on.

THE GREAT MOMENT may not be a signature Preston Sturges comedy, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it.

From The Great McGinty until leaving Paramount at the close of World War II, Preston Sturges created a stream of comedy classics, some of the funniest moments ever put on film. His one failure while he was at Paramount was this film, The Great Moment.

Paramount had Sturges under contract and as such he had to do their bidding and on this occasion the studio required of him to direct this biographical film of the life of William T.G. Morton, the alleged inventor of ether.

From their point of view it was one odd choice to direct a biographical film like The Story of Louis Pasteur or Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet. What possessed the studio brains to select Sturges? On the other hand Sturges did have a lot of creative freedom at Paramount so why didn't he just take one for the team and direct a straight forward biography?

He did neither and the film had stalwart Joel McCrea as the dentist who demonstrated the first public use of ether during surgery. Betty Field was his long suffering wife in an earnest, but rather dull biographical study. It's not even that Morton was that noble because there were other claims by people who were working along the same lines as he. It all amounts to a confusing story.

William Demarest was a player beloved of Preston Sturges and he appeared in all of his Paramount films. He does so here as a man who was willing to be experimented on by McCrea. When McCrea gives him a dose of the wrong stuff the results are hilarious, but oh so out of place in this type of film.

For those who love Preston Sturges's comedies as I do, this is one to stay away from.

Decidedly odd, you might think, coming from Preston Sturges but then again, perhaps not as the idiosyncratic Sturges seldom stuck to 'conventional' genre pictures; even his screw-ball comedies were more perverse than what was the norm in Hollywood at the time, so this biopic of the man who discovered anesthesia for use in the dental profession is a far cry from the usual Hollywood biopic, (even the subject is obscure and unlikely). Not, of course, is it necessarily any better for that. It's a slight, disingenuous little picture veering uneasily from drama to comedy without making much of an inroad either way.

Joel McCrea, (blander than usual), is the crusading dentist, (sic), and Betty Field, the wife who eggs him on. Some of the Sturges stock company pop up in sundry supporting parts, (noticeably William Demarest), but none make much of an impression. They, like the film, remain largely inoffensive. Not a failure, precisely, but a blip nevertheless.

I can't add much to wmorrow59's excellent summary. It caught the strengths and weaknesses of this film and provided excellent historical background. Be sure to read it.

This film is only worth watching if you're a Preston Sturges fanatic (like me) and are willing to sit through his one failure as well as his many triumphs. I have a hunch that the studio meddling accounts for much of the trouble -- the movie's pace and structure are erratic at best -- but I also fear that our man Preston may have wandered too far from his natural path as a filmmaker. This is no buried treasure. Sturges's cut may have been an improvement, but I don't see the makings of a good movie here. The dialogue is weird when it isn't plain awful, the protagonist is a pigheaded dimwit, and the moments of slapstick are wildly misplaced.

If you buy Turner's incredible 7-film Sturges box set, do so for the other six titles -- all of them masterpieces.

This film is notorious for having been butchered by the studio and shelved for two years (the trailer awkwardly tries to pass it off as another Sturges comedy); atypically for him, it’s a medical biopic on the lines of Warner Bros,’ similar films of a few years earlier – and, therefore, more serious than usual (in fact, the few comedy elements here seem like a distraction to the unfolding drama).

I own a volume of Sturges’ scripts – including the original version of this one, called TRIUMPH OVER PAIN (the book from which it derived also inspired the latter-day Boris Karloff vehicle CORRIDORS OF BLOOD [1958]!), which is certainly his most ambitious project; I had read it some years ago and recall it being quite complexly structured: what remains of the film is pretty straightforward, other than adopting a flashback framework (to which it doesn’t even return at the end!). Still, as it stands, it’s hardly a disaster (if undeniably choppy and rushed): fascinating as much for its plot about the inception of anesthesia by a forgotten small-town doctor, W.T.G. Morton, which many a fellow doctor tried to claim as their own invention, as for its handsome and meticulous recreation of an era (recalling Orson Welles’ equally compromised THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS [1942]).

The cast includes a few of Sturges’ renowned stock company: star Joel McCrea (in their third consecutive collaboration) is well-cast in the lead; William Demarest appears as his comic sidekick (the doctor’s first painless client – repeatedly, he starts to recount his experience but each time succeeding in going no further than the first couple of phrases!); Porter Hall (as the somewhat patronizing American President); Franklin Pangborn (in a brief role as secretary to an esteemed doctor whom McCrea wants to test his formula); Jimmy Conlin (the chemist who sells McCrea the ‘miraculous’ ether); Torben Meyer (an irascible doctor who is urgently called in to treat a patient administered an overdose of laughing gas – more on this later).

The remaining actors include: Betty Field as Morton’s long-suffering wife (whose limited role is often relegated to the sidelines, at least in this version); Harry Carey (dignified as the surgeon who regrets the barbaric methods he’s forced to use while operating on his patients); Louis Jean Heydt (as an arrogant young student who uses laughing gas for desensitization, but whose experiment goes comically awry); Grady Sutton (this W.C. Fields regular appears in one of only two overtly slapsticky scenes as the recipient of the laughing gas – the other involves McCrea’s first attempt to extract Demarest’s tooth, which renders him temporarily crazed and sends him crashing through the window into the street below!); Edwin Maxwell (the usual authoritarian role, in this case a colleague of Carey’s who indirectly stoops to blackmail in order to force McCrea to reveal the secret ingredient of his formula – which the latter was concealing, as a means of protection, only so long as the “Letheon” invention was officially patented).

Sturges, obviously, is all for the hero who has to face up to a general wave of both ignorance and prejudice, not to mention centuries of savage medical tradition; in fact, as depicted in the film, the students seem to treat daily grueling operations almost as another form of entertainment! The film rises to a number of good dramatic moments (usually seeing McCrea in confrontation with someone or other) – especially powerful, however, are Carey’s first successful operation with an anesthetized patient (and his surprised but enthusiastic approval of the procedure) and the ending, complete with moody lighting and religious music, as Morton compassionately approaches the next ‘victim’ of established science…when the doors of reason, as it were, are suddenly flung open and the painless method is accepted into its fold.