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The Great Moment is a american film of genre Drama directed by Preston Sturges released in USA on 6 september 1944 with Joel McCrea
The Great Moment (1944)
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Add to a movie listReleased in USA 6 september 1944
Directed by Preston Sturges
OriginUSA
Themes Medical-themed films
Rating61%
The Great Moment is a 1944 biographical film written and directed by Preston Sturges. Based on the book Triumph Over Pain (1940) by René Fülöp-Miller, it tells the story of Dr. William Thomas Green Morton, a 19th-century Boston dentist who discovered the use of ether for general anesthesia. The film stars Joel McCrea and Betty Field, and features Harry Carey, William Demarest, Franklin Pangborn and Porter Hall.
The movie was filmed in 1942 but not released for over two years, and the released version differed from what Preston Sturges had wished, although he publicly accepted the film as his own. Paramount Pictures disliked the film Sturges had made, and pulled it from his control, re-titled and re-edited it, in the process making it (especially in the early segment) more confusing for the audience to understand. The studio's released version was marketed in a way that made it appear to be one of Sturges' comedies. The film was not well received by the critics or the public, and marked the end of a sustained run of success for Sturges, who had already left Paramount by the time the film was released.
Although rarely seen today, the film is worth viewing for its flashback structure – comparable in some ways to Citizen Kane, which was influenced by the earlier film The Power and the Glory, for which Sturges wrote the screenplay – and for its irreverent and subtly satirical tone, unusual for a time when most Hollywood biopics were over-inflated and sentimental. In 2003 a medical-dental historian in a lengthy analysis of the movie and its history -- which cited its flashback structure, timeless subject, injections of humor, and "un-Pasteur-like" treatment of its protagonist, while adhering reasonably well to the historical record -- concluded that "The Great Moment may now be due for a general reevaluation by movie historians and critics who, like most folks, have never felt much affection for dentists past and present.
Synopsis
The titles and credits open with a scene (in 1846) of a triumphant street procession and a jubilant crowd hailing William Morton (Joel McCrea) with signs such as "Pain is no more," followed by a long, written prologue pointing out, in part, that "before ether there was nothing." Next, an old Eben Frost (William Demarest) is seen heading through the snow to the farmhouse of Morton's aging widow Lizzie (Betty Field). On the way he stops at a pawn shop and redeems a medal once awarded to Morton inscribed: "To the benefactor of mankind."Actors
Joel McCrea
(William Thomas Green Morton)
Betty Field
(Elizabeth Morton)
Harry Carey
(Professor John C. Warren)
William Demarest
(Eben Frost)
Louis Jean Heydt
(Dr. Horace Wells)
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Suggestions of similar film to The Great Moment
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