Shining Victory

One of the new-to-me programmers that I recorded when TCM had its 100th anniversary tribute to Warner Bros. back in April was Shining Victory, which is of course not to be confused with Bright Victory or Dark Victory.

The opening credits mention the movie being based on a play by A.J. Cronin, whom you might recall as the man who wrote the material behind the excellent doctor character piece The Citadel. Cronin was a real-life doctor, so as you can guess this movie also deals with medicine. The main doctor here is Paul Venner (James Stephenson), who at the start of the movie is doing research into dementia in Budapest in 1935, something that had to be mentioned since by the time the movie was made in 1941, Europe was already at war again. Venner discovers that his research material was used in a study published by his supervisor, Prof. Von Reiter (Sig Ruman), who only shows up in this opening scene which is I think only in the movie to do some character exposition as to why Dr. Venner winds up so bitter. In any case, Reiter is a powerful man, and sics the police on Venner, forcing him to flee the country without his research papers, since he's a British subject.

So Venner returns to his native UK, and wouldn't you know it, but he immediately runs into Dr. Drewett (Donald Crisp), who works at a sanitarium up in Scotland. It would be the perfect place for Vetter to go and do the money-making work that will enable him to spend his extra time doing that research which is what he really wants to do. Not only that, but the sanitarium is able to give him an assistant in the form of Dr. Mary Murray (Geraldine Fitzgerald).

However, that's not a match made in heaven by any means. Dr. Vetter doesn't necessarily want an assistant, and Dr. Murray insists that she's not a permanent assistant as she's preparing to do missionary work in war-torn China where her skills are really needed. Venner continues his research and shows himself to be that trope of the brilliant but difficult research scientist. He seems to be on the right track with his research, but the institute unsurprisingly wants results now since they're underwriting the research to a fairly hefty sum. And of course, Dr. Venner just has to fall in love with Dr. Murray. And then there's a plot twist....

Shining Victory is clearly a lesser film than The Citadel, I think, and it wasn't hard to figure out why. One is the obvious issue of Warner Bros. making a B-movie out of it in that none of their big stars was cast. But the plot also made me think not of Cronin, but of another author whose doctor-themed books were turned into movies, Lloyd C. Douglas. The problem i that Douglas insisted on inserting heavy-handed religious themes into his work, such as Magnificent Obsession. Cronin doesn't veer that far into Douglas territory, but it definitely felt like there was more heavy-handedness here than in The Citadel.

Still, all of the actors do the best they can with the material, and needless to say they're very talented and professional actors. In lesser hands, Shining Victory could have been a terrible movie, but thanks to Warner Bros. professionalism, it's at worst a misfire that doesn't quite succeed.