Captain Newman, M.D. (1963)

Powerful

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It isn't, alas, very often that a movie holds up after half a century but one that does hold up and then some, is Captain Newman MD. I remember vividly how much I enjoyed it initially and when it was screened on British television today I was fearful that it would disappoint and delighted to find that if anything it has grown in stature. It's impossible to think of anyone but the often vastly underrated Gregory Peck who could capture the eponymous role so perfectly; essentially he portrays what the Jews call a mensch, a human being in the true, rich, sense of the word. As Head of the psychiatric unit at an Arizona-based military hospital in World War Two he is faced with a chronic shortage of staff and equipment and a General George Patton-type military mind-set that totally fails to acknowledge and/or accept that stress/battle fatigue/traumatic experiences are not moral cowardice under fancy names. Okay, so Tony Curtis just re-cycles his Operation Petticoat dog-robber (a role done much better than Curtis's two attempts, by James Garner in The Americanisation of Emily), but that is a small price to pay for truly outstanding ensemble acting from the whole cast; okay yet again, Eddie Albert and Bobby Darin are gifted roles that would take serious effort to screw up, so well are they written, but both actors take them by the scruff of the neck and act the bejeezus out of them. In the depiction of combat stress it recalls Peck's own previous movie Henry King's Twelve O'Clock High; in terms of ensemble playing in a military conduct it recalls Mr. Roberts, and I have a sneaking suspicion it eclipse both. Outstanding.

Hot off "To Kill a Mockingbird", Gregory Peck played another really good role in David Miller's "Captain Newman, M.D.". This time he's a psychiatrist on an army base in WWII having to deal with what we now recognize as PTSD, while also dealing with the military bureaucracy. In a way, the movie almost seems like a preview of the war in which the United States was about to mire itself (the Vietnam War). Fine support comes from Tony Curtis as a streetwise corporal and Angie Dickinson as a tolerant lieutenant, along with Eddie Albert, Bobby Darin and Robert Duvall as Peck's damaged patients.Without a doubt this is one that I recommend. Maybe it's not as good as "To Kill a Mockingbird" - a little silly at times - but still a solid look at the world with which the psychiatrist has to put up.Also starring Bethel Leslie, James Gregory, Robert F. Simon, Dick Sargent*, Larry Storch, Jane Withers and Vito Scotti.*Robert F. Simon and Dick Sargent played father and son on "Bewitched". Also, Vito Scotti guest-starred on an episode.

When this movie came out, the idea of military men needing psychiatric help was a shocking idea. The "average" American knew little about the subject.Mr. Peck offers his usual stoic, honorable role as the title character. he brings compassion and discipline to the role. The break out star of the movie was Bobby Darin. His shattering and convincing breakdown was superb, acting at it's finest. Angie Dickinson is of course there to provide the male with something luscious to look at and she does her job beautifully. Teasing and flirting with her patients yet never letting things go too far.An excellent movie, one that is well worth watching again.

If anything positive can be said for 1963's Captain Newman, MD, it's that it is a compassionate film. It is not a coherent one, nor is it ever sure if it's a WWII drama or a stale service-comedy.CNMD boasts a lot of very familiar faces doing and saying ridiculous things: Gregory Peck is not a man for light comedy (and when he's falling-down drunk, you'll want him to just go to bed and sleep it off, not laugh at him as he pratfalls about with Angie Dickinson). Dickinson is embarrassing as Peck's sort of love interest; she's given little to do but look good and look concerned (which erupts into very controlled weeping when the news from the front gets bad). Tony Curtis wears the outfit of street-wise non-com who keeps telling Peck how easy psychiatry is, dog-robbing the top of a Christmas tree, and herding sheep. Robert Duvall reprises his Boo Radley role from To Kill a Mockingbird, Bobby Darin chews, smacks, and gulps the scenery as a B-17 gunner whose got a bad case of survivor's guilt, and Eddie Albert manages to be the only actor who exceeds the bare minimum of acting expectations here. His Army Air Force colonel is suffering from sending too many youngsters to their deaths, and watching him break up and shatter is the only saving grace in this shoddy mess.Yet, the movie is a compassionate one. It's very madness-of-war and stick-it-to-the-man in its treatment of combat-related mental illness. CNMD is full of 11th grade psychology (so that the audience will get it; God help the trained professional who watches this), cutesy characters, and tedious situation drama and comedy. It reminded me of the first three or four years of M*A*S*H on TV (before Alan Alda decided to inject the series with an overdose of deep). Everyone is running about, trying their best to get the message out to you that WAR IS HELL, but it's nuttier still, and the only way to win it is to be cutesy and compassionate.I like my war-movies-with-a-message a bit more sure of themselves. Just watch Tom Hanks pull himself together three quarters of the way through Saving Private Ryan or the movie M*A*S*H wherein Bobby Troupe keeps confronting the idiocies inherent in soldiering by simply hanging his hands over the steering wheel of a jeep and muttering, "Goddamned army!" Leave the head-shrinking to the professionals.