The Citadel

Andrew Manson, young, idealistic and newly qualified, takes his first post in a Welsh mining town. He notices how many of the miners share the same cough, and when he tries to establish why, he is blocked. He moves to London, where his practice fails until a friend shows him how to make a fortune out of wealthy patients who are not actually ill. Manson takes that road and loses himself on it. King Vidor adapted A. J. Cronin's 1937 novel. Cronin was a doctor himself and wrote the book about the rot between medicine and money; both book and film are credited with feeding the argument in Britain that led to free health care. The film took four Academy Award nominations, one of them for Robert Donat.