Not as a Stranger

A film set at an American medical school. Lucas is a good student and determined to be a doctor. He has no money; his father drinks and gives him nothing. When he is about to be thrown out he finds a solution: he marries Kristina, a nurse at the hospital. She has savings and is in love with him. Lucas uses the marriage plainly as a means and does not admit it even to himself. He graduates and starts work in a small town. There he believes he is the only person who takes medicine seriously; he looks down on his colleagues and wants to take responsibility for the patients as well. In the town he starts an affair with a wealthy widow. The matter at the centre is arrogance: the man trusts his own ability, and that trust makes him both a good physician and an unbearable person. One operation upsets the balance. Robert Mitchum plays Lucas, Olivia de Havilland plays Kristina and Frank Sinatra his friend. Broderick Crawford and Charles Bickford are in the cast. Stanley Kramer directed; it is his first film as director, having worked as a producer before. The source is Morton Thompson's best-selling novel. A solid choice for anyone who likes medical drama and the studio productions of the 1950s. For a viewer wanting something short, it runs over two hours and proceeds in sections.