This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. I'm back after taking a week off for the theme of new releases in 2021, since I don't think I watched one 2021 release. (By the same token, I'll be off for the "2021 Freshman Series" TV week at the end of the month.) This week's theme is one that's not too difficult, "Movies Set in Hospitals". Unsurprisingly, the most difficult part was finding three films that a search of the blog says I haven't used recently. I thought I'd used one of these, but when I searched, the blog says no, I havent, so I'll use it now since I don't otherwise keep track of which films I've picked apart from searching the blog. No theme within a theme; just three picks in chronological order:
Life Begins (1932). Loretta Young plays a woman sent to prison for a notorious crime of passion, but who is pregnant with a very difficult pregnancy, so she's sent out of prison to a "lying-in" hospital, where expectant mothers stay until giving birth, a ton of them cheek-by-jown in one ward. Glenda Farrell unsurprisingly steals the show as a woman who doesn't want her child, to the point that she keeps booze in her hot-water bottle. This is th sort of programmer was really good at churning out in the 1930s.
Good Morning, Miss Dove (1955). Jennifer Jones plays a small-town New England teacher with a stick up her ass. One day, she suddenly gets a sharp pain, and has to go to the hospital for an operation that could possibly kill her. As she reflects upon her life from her hospital, it turns out she has good reason for winding up the way she did, and that deep down inside, everybody in town -- and I mean everybody -- really loves her as she doesn't quite realize the positive influence she's had on all the people who at one point in the past were students of hers.
Intent to Kill (1958). Herbert Lom plays a South American dictator who was attacked and fairly seriously injured by his political opposition, such that he needs surgery, and goes to Canada to get it in the hopes that his opponents won't find him in a Montreal hospital. Of course, they've got their own spies trying to kill him. Meanwhile, Richard Todd is set to perform the surgery, but he's got personal problems as his wife wants him to go back to England to go into cushy private practice. Meanwhile, the wife is also jealous and worried about the nurse (Betsy Drake) who will be assisting in the operation.
3 comments:
These are all new to me!
I want to see these films. I love the under-appreciated Glenda Farrell so I can put up with Loretta Young. Marking these films down because Herbert Lom is always great in these fun flicks.
Life Begins sounds like a fascinating film!
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