Dr. Socrates (1935)

Best movie ever!

The acting in this movie is really good.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Just before Paul Muni got his chance to play the titled doctor in The Story of Louis Pasteur (1935), the role which earned him his Best Actor Academy Award, he played the title role in this crime drama, as Dr. Lee Cardwell. William Dieterle directed both films; their other two collaborations were also titled roles for the actor: in the Oscar winning Best Picture The Life of Emile Zola (1937) and as Juarez (1939).This film's story was written by W.R. Burnett, who'd provided continuity for an earlier Muni title role, Scarface (1932); Mary McCall Jr. adapted it and Robert Lord, who provided the story for Muni's Bordertown (1935), wrote the screenplay.Dr. Cardwell (Muni) now lives in Big Ben, "the biggest small town" in an Ohio county, because as a big city surgeon he'd lost his nerve when he couldn't save his fiancée's life; she'd been critically injured in an automobile accident after a fight with him. Despite the urging of two of his former colleagues (one played by Samuel Hinds), he refuses to return to his practice, instead continuing to "hide out" in a small town community "run" by another gregarious doctor named Ginder (Robert Barrat), making it difficult for moody Cardwell to find patients. Dr. Ginder has dubbed him Dr. Socrates because his nose is always in books written by foreign scholars. Cardwell lives with Ma Ganson (Helen Lowell), who treats him like a son and allows his rent to be overdue.The action really begins when a local boy now big city gangster Red Bastian (Barton MacLane) returns home to hide out, and have Cardwell treat his bullet wound. Though Cardwell refuses payment, Red leaves him a C note ($100) which, because of his desperate financial condition - especially with the grocer, Cardwell deposits. Banker Ben Suggs (Raymond Brown) doesn't particularly like Ginder and befriends Cardwell, who agrees to visit Suggs's hypochondriac daughter Caroline (Grace Stafford) and helps to "cure" her.While Red and his gang are on their way to another job, they pick up a hitchhiker named Josephine 'Jo' Gray (Ann Dvorak), but she escapes during the holdup making some think she was a moll even though Red had shot her in the shoulder after she'd run. Cardwell helps her and takes her to his office to treat her wound against Ginder's protestations. Later, when Jo is cleared by the Sheriff et al, Cardwell asks her to stay because he's formed an affection for her, one which is mutual.When Red's arm that had been shot starts to hurt again per an infection, he has his gang kidnap the doctor and bring him blindfolded to their hideout. Afterwards though, Cardwell sees Bob Catlett (Olin Howland), and vice versa, and figures out where he's been. This is important because Red in turn has Jo kidnapped such that Cardwell decides that he must save her (from the fate of becoming a moll and) for himself. This happens at virtually the same time that G-man Greer (Henry O'Neill) et al have arrived in town to find and apprehend, or kill while trying, Red and his gang.Ma pleads with Greer to wait until 1 AM to rush the Catlett place; meanwhile, Cardwell is inside because he'd convinced Red that the Feds were after him per the C note from Red they'd traced to him. Because Catlett had questioned him about typhoid fever per one of his neighbor's earlier, Cardwell persuades Red and his gang to submit to an injection which is ostensibly a vaccine but will really put them to sleep for 12 hours.Of course there's a last minute raid and gun battle with the G-men. Red is killed in the shootout whereas Jo and Cardwell survive so that they can be together in the end; Ginder and the rest of the town sing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" to Cardwell.Hobart Cavanaugh plays a busybody pharmacist-soda jerk and Mayo Methot plays Red's moll Muggsy; Dick Elliot and Grady Sutton, as a grocery clerk, appear uncredited as does Marc Lawrence, as the gangster named Lefty.

Ann Dvorak first hit Hollywood as a choreographer and dancer but once she broke out of the chorus line and into dramatic parts she made an immediate impact. With her intensity and ravishing beauty she could have spent her career being an adornment in any film she was placed in but she was a fine actress and wanted better parts and treatment - unfortunately she received neither. Warners lost interest in their feisty star and started putting her into any film that came along. There were duds (she must have cringed when she recalled her part in "Heat Lightning") but there were also some interesting ones. "Dr. Socrates" had her starring with Paul Muni who in the 1930s was Warner's most important star even though Robinson and Cagney were far more popular.This is a great little movie about a small town doctor jokingly called "Dr. Socrates" by the local wags because he always has his head in a book and Jo (Dvorak), a young hitch-hiker, who unwittingly finds a ride into town with the local bad boy turned vicious gangster, Red Bastian (Barton MacLane). Unfortunately for Dvorak and Muni, once MacLane hits the scene there is no room for anyone else. Barton "why speak when shouting will do" MacLane is just fantastic as the "rough as guts" gangster - he never leaves centre stage, whether he is making a call on the doc to remove a bullet or holding forth among his gang (Marc Lawrence has a bit as a young punk) - even Mayo Methot as his moll "Muggsy" is no match for his brawling and brutish ways.If it wasn't for Barton and Ann, this would be just another movie about "down home folk" with a few holes. Muni's doctor doesn't have a particularly warm persona and he doesn't seem concerned when "Ma" can't pay the grocery bills. When Jo realises she is riding with bank robbers she tries to escape but is shot and taken to the doctor. For a while I thought it was going to be similar in plot to "Fury". The establishing shots had shown a lot of the town's people as narrow minded, finding the doctor a figure of fun just because he is a square peg in a round hole. Word gets out that Jo is a gun moll and there is a scene where it seems like the whole town converges on the doctor's doorstep to run Jo out of town.The last part of the movie takes place at the gang's hideout. Red has kidnapped Jo - she is going to be his girl from now on and the doctor, on finding her, realises that the hideout is in the vicinity of a typhoid outbreak. MacLane seemed to have so much fun with his role, especially when he tries to convince Jo that he can be real fun to be around while threatening to knock "Muggsy" silly!!! Terrific fun!!

Muni was just biding his time between "important" roles when Warners made a deal with him to do this little crime melodrama, after which they would let him do one of his pet projects. So here he is as the man whose constant reading of books causes the townspeople to label him "Dr. Socrates," a name that seems to fit the soft-spoken, easy going doctor that Muni plays in a minor key.Instead of overwhelming the screen in his usual manner, he lets BARTON MacLANE give a vivid, scene-stealing performance as Big Red, a criminal wounded in a bank holdup who needs the doc's care and promises to send him more customers if he'll put a lid on treating him, instead of reporting him to the police. Fortunately, MacLane has some of the best lines in the script and ends up being the most interesting character in the whole story.ANN DVORAK is young and pretty as the hitch-hiking woman who accepts a ride from MacLane's gang and ends up being suspected of being a gang member when the gang pulls a bank robbery and she's seen fleeing from the scene. When she's hurt, she ends up in Muni's care and the rest of the story is rather predictable but entertaining.As the N.Y. Times said: "A pleasant enough melodrama" about a doctor who unwittingly gets mixed up with the mob. It's a trifle with a better than average script and some nice performances from the Warner contract players.

(There are Spoilers) Having lost his nerve as a brilliant surgeon after surviving a car crash back in Chicago, that killed his fiancé Sylvia, Dr. Lee. Cardwell aka Dr. Socrates, Paul Muni, moved from the big city of Chicago to little Big Bend Ind to reopen his practice. Lee not interested in money never takes cash from his patients but only IOU's which, from watching the movie, are never repaid. Just making ends meet Lee has difficulty paying his bills but somehow has no problem maintaining a big house as well as a full-time maid Ma Granson, Helen Howell. Things are about to change and that has to do with Lee's taking his oath as a doctor seriously to the point of not only helping those who need his services with or without health insurance, as we've already seen, but even those on the lamb from the law like bank robber Red Bastian, Barton MacLane.The Bastian gang picking up Jo Gray, Ann Dvorak, hitch-hiking to California end up in a shoot-out in Big Bend where both Bastian and Jo end up wounded. Lee taking Jo to his home to be treated for her wounds is accused with Jo of aiding the Bastian Mob. Since Jo is suspected, by being with the gangster at the time of her getting shot, to be Bastian's gun moll and getaway driver. Lee refusing to release Jo to a vigilante mob until she's fully recovered from her wounds later get's involved with Bastian himself as he, and a number of his fellow hoodlums, break into his place demanding treatment for his gun shot wounds. Bastian grateful for what Lee did for him gives him a C-Note, 100 dollar bill, for his troubles. That bill will later have the FBI and local police trace it back to the Bastine bank robbery thus implicating Lee, as well as the already suspected Jo, as a suspect and member of the Red Bastian gang.With all this going on and Lee about to be taken into custody it's found out that Red had his hoods raid his home and kidnap Jo whom Bastian has take a strong liking for. Getting the FBI and police to go along with him Lee goes to Bastian's hideout, where he was earlier taken by Bastine's mob, and devises a plan to not only get Red Bastian to release Jo but also give himself, and his gang, up; by being tricked into facing something that's far worse then any police bullets or a life behind bars.As he's treating Red Bastian's wound Lee taking his temperature see's that it's normal, 98.6, but tell the shocked gangster that it's 103. Lee tells a shocked Bastain that not only does he but his entire gang, together with Lee & Jo, have contracted typhoid from the well water that they've been drinking. Vaccinating Bastian and most of his gang Lee instead of a typhoid vaccine shoots them up with dope causing the mobsters to conk out before the FBI, who told Lee that they would start moving in on Bastian's hideout in less then an hour, make their move.Lee's actions still didn't prevent a wild shoot-out outside in the Bastian hideout. Since the hoodlums there weren't and couldn't all be vaccinated by him but it prevented an even bigger shoot-out and massacre inside where most of the Bastian mob was. All of this didn't give the film the feel-good ending that you would have expected. Bastian staggering from the influence of the dope tries to make his last stand but is so groggy that he could barley stand on his two feet. Instead of shooting it out with the Feds, and going out in a blaze of glory, Bastian falls down a fight of stairs landing right on his head and into a pair of handcuffs instead.