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Be ready -to -wear right off the rack. Don't get me wrong: Hallmark fans expect a certain product. We want to know who is the incompatible couple within the first 10 minutes, and we expect that they will kiss politely within the last 60 seconds of the film. The leads are reliable; the direction is professional; the snow is pleasant and not too deep; and sometime or another there will be a Christmas tree lighting. I'll find and good. But the whole experience should not feel so cookie cutter that you wonder after the last kiss whether you really would have missed very much if you had skipped it after the first 10 minutes and just come back for the last kiss.

A film almost 75 years old cannot avoid having dated a little. The wonderful doctor is perhaps a little too wonderful. The virtuous-though-pregnant heroine is a little too virtuous. Certainly, in a world of HMOs, it is not possible to watch the Clinic That Puts the Patients First without at least a giggle, if not an outright guffaw.

But the characters are nice and well presented. This was Grant in his late 40s, a lovely age for his "responsible hero" movies. Walter Slezak and Sidney Blackmer were always consummate pros in their quieter roles. Hume Cronyn was not less than brilliant as the administrative "little man." And Findlay Currie was a treasure.

No less important, Mankiewicz as writer and director brought heart and an air of some optimistic goodness to the script and to the project overall, certainly as welcome in these days as in those.

The film was trashed by most, but not all critics, and lost like 40 million dollars.

I found it engrossing, beautifully acted, and directed with imagination, nuance and touching sensitivity.

I want very much to encourage people to watch it, so I will avoid spoilers which is not easy to do in discussing this film.

Although it is rightly classified as a drama, it is in many ways a mystery, and like the best mysteries, the clues are all there, but the story itself becomes so compelling that the viewer is too involved in what is happening on the screen to put the clues together and solve the mystery.

Please watch it and decide for yourself. It really deserves serious attention. After you have watched it and thought about it for a while, go to YouTube and watch one of several analyses of the film which may help you appreciate how skillful a film this really is.