Tag: movie review
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Movie review: Miss Evers’ Boys
P. Ravi Shankar Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Segregated water fountains. Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. U.S. Army photo. The Tuskegee Syphilis study was a dark chapter in United States history. In 1932, the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) began to study the natural history of progression of syphilis. The study was originally called the “Tuskegee…
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Movie review: Bisturi: La Mafia Bianca
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Surgeons operating aboard the USS Harry S. Truman. US Navy photo via Wikimedia. Public domain. “Medicine is power. It makes us giants.” – Dr. Daniele Valotti in Bisturi: La Mafia Bianca Bisturi: La Mafia Bianca (1973) is an understated, well-acted, and critical “doctor movie.” Unlike The Hospital, it is…
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Doctor Cabbie: No good deed goes unpunished
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “I was bound by an oath that I took.”– Doctor Cabbie Doctor Cabbie (2014) begins with Deepak V. Chopra (played by Vinay Virmani) reciting the Hippocratic Oath along with his graduating class from the University of New Delhi. The face of this newly-minted doctor is glowing with joy. He has fulfilled his…
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Movie review: Where Does it Hurt?
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Peter Sellers in 1971. RR Auction. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. “This film is dedicated to the honest, sincere MDs—whose lives are dedicated to the sacred Hippocratic oath. Will these three doctors please stand up?” This dedication sets the tone of Where Does It Hurt? (1972). Unlike the 1971 film…
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Movie review: Première Année (The Freshmen)
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden “Never memorize something you can look up.” – Albert Einstein “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash. Première Année (literally “First Year”) is a 2018 French film. In it, we meet and follow two young men in their first year of…
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A portrait of dementia
Lindsay RipleyDallas, Texas, United States A few months ago, I watched The Father, a film with Olivia Colman in a main role and Anthony Hopkins as the titular father. Hopkins plays Anthony, a character who bears Hopkins’ own name because writer and director Florian Zeller wrote the part imagining Hopkins in it. Like Hopkins, now…
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Movie review: Kings Row – Assassins in white coats
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Above all, I must not play God.”— Revised Hippocratic Oath2 Kings Row (1942) is a film set in a small American town in the early nineteen-hundreds. It features two doctors who are best avoided as well as a bright young man called Parris sent by his wealthy grandmother to study medicine in…
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Movie review: Pressure Point – treating the hateful patient
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden “You sing ‘My country ’tis of thee’ while they walk all over you.” — The patient, Pressure Point German American Bund rally (1938 or 1939). From “Battle of the United States”, produced by Army Information Branch, Army Pictorial Service, Air Forces, and Navy Department in cooperation with all united…
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Movie review: The Hospital, “the wounded madhouse of our times”
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Protesters in San Francisco. Photo by Rdmsf01. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. “Where do you train your nurses, Mrs. Christie, Dachau?” — Dr. Herbert Bock, The Hospital The Hospital (1971) is a devastating satire about American medicine in the second half of the twentieth century. We see the functioning…