One of the later World War II movies, I suppose, Captain Newman, M.D. was made in 1963 and reflects then-current sensibilities. Gregory Peck (who died earlier this year) plays a psychiatrist towards the end of the war, running a mental ward on an Arizona Air Corps hospital base where soldiers are shipped for up to six weeks of diagnosis and treatment before being sent back to action, discharged or sent for longer term care. His base commander, played by Barney Miller’s James Gregory, barely acknowledges the head shrinker as a fellow physician and his finagler/orderly Tony Curtis believes he can pick up the necessary skills by reading Freud and a few other books.
This film, essentially a series of sketches, sadly marked the beginning of the end for Peck as an actor, or so it seems to me from a perusal of his IMDB page. He was coming off a string of great movies–he won the Oscar for Best Actor for his Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, the film he made just prior to Newman–but afterwards came mosty dreck. And Peck did no one any favors this outing by playing the M.D. with his laconic, nearly invisible emotional style.
Most of the roles are fairly cardboard, the writers seemingly attempting to show that war has more horrors than just death and splintered limbs by putting a variety of neuroses on display; when that wasn’t enough to fill their film budget, a squad of Italian POWs were tossed in for a bit more comic relief. Eddie Albert is a respected mission planner who can’t accept that he’s sent many young men off to their deaths. Robert Duvall is a WASPy husband ashamed into muteness by his fear. Angie Dickinson is the (gorgeous) young nurse who’s behind the great doctor, in contrast to Jane Withers (just saw her on an episode of M*A*S*H too) portraying the ‘plain’, put-upon nurse. We even get Larry Storch, Dick Sargent and Bobby Darin in supporting roles; Darin shows he could really act, or at least as much as anyone in this melodrama, getting nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Not recommended
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