Dr. Socrates (1935)

Wonderful character development!

just watch it!

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

If you're a fan of Paul Muni, as I am, you'll want to see this film as an example of one of his last films before he made it with "Louis Pasteur". Yet even though he went on to bigger and more successful films, his earlier work in "Fugitive from a Chain Gang" is my favorite Muni film.Ann Dvorak, Robert Barrat and Barton Maclane are along for the ride, but they all made better films. It's interesting to watch Mayo Methot (Humphrey Bogart's future wife who gave them the name "Battling Bogarts) playing the gangster's moll.Despite the low budget and the obvious production limitations, William Dieterle manages to keep it moving along. This is the first of the Muni/Dieterle films which included Pasteur, Zola, Juarez.Apart from the historical interest, the film doesn't stand the test of time. There are dozens of films from this period which are far better.

Paul Muni has never made a bad movie or given a poor performance. He didn't crank out movie after movie like so many stars in that era, he carefully picked his roles. This is a terrific picture, Muni plays a doctor who has become a gangster's physician, but not by choice. The gangster is played with gusto by Barton MacLane. A woman who is kidnapped by the gang (Ann Dvorak) is injured and brought to Muni. She and the doctor soon fall in love. But, the gangster wants her, because she could testify against him since she knows what he looks like. Great cinematography but it's Muni's picture all the way. Helen Lowell provides fine support as "Ma".

Paul Muni is called "Dr. Socrates" in this 1935 film, mainly because of his love of books. Here Muni is a struggling young doctor, Dr. Lee Cardwell, who becomes involved with gangsters after helping a hitchhiker (Ann Dvorak) who was in their getaway car when the thugs committed a robbery. However, many people think she's part of the gang, and Cardwell works to protect and defend her.This was Muni's first film with William Dieterle, who directed Muni is his great films to follow, including The Story of Louis Pasteur, Juarez, and The Life of Emile Zola. Muni is good as Dr. S, but he has formidable competition in Barton MacLane, who plays Red Bastian, the main criminal who is a sort of John Dillinger type. In the film, he's wounded and forces Dr. Cardwell to treat him.This film was rewritten and redone in 1939 as "King of the Underworld" with Kay Francis and Humphrey Bogart, before his big stardom.Good cast, nice ending.

(There are Spoilers) Having lost his nerve as a brilliant surgeon after surviving a car crash back in Chicago, that killed his fiancé Sylvia, Dr. Lee. Cardwell aka Dr. Socrates, Paul Muni, moved from the big city of Chicago to little Big Bend Ind to reopen his practice. Lee not interested in money never takes cash from his patients but only IOU's which, from watching the movie, are never repaid. Just making ends meet Lee has difficulty paying his bills but somehow has no problem maintaining a big house as well as a full-time maid Ma Granson, Helen Howell. Things are about to change and that has to do with Lee's taking his oath as a doctor seriously to the point of not only helping those who need his services with or without health insurance, as we've already seen, but even those on the lamb from the law like bank robber Red Bastian, Barton MacLane.The Bastian gang picking up Jo Gray, Ann Dvorak, hitch-hiking to California end up in a shoot-out in Big Bend where both Bastian and Jo end up wounded. Lee taking Jo to his home to be treated for her wounds is accused with Jo of aiding the Bastian Mob. Since Jo is suspected, by being with the gangster at the time of her getting shot, to be Bastian's gun moll and getaway driver. Lee refusing to release Jo to a vigilante mob until she's fully recovered from her wounds later get's involved with Bastian himself as he, and a number of his fellow hoodlums, break into his place demanding treatment for his gun shot wounds. Bastian grateful for what Lee did for him gives him a C-Note, 100 dollar bill, for his troubles. That bill will later have the FBI and local police trace it back to the Bastine bank robbery thus implicating Lee, as well as the already suspected Jo, as a suspect and member of the Red Bastian gang.With all this going on and Lee about to be taken into custody it's found out that Red had his hoods raid his home and kidnap Jo whom Bastian has take a strong liking for. Getting the FBI and police to go along with him Lee goes to Bastian's hideout, where he was earlier taken by Bastine's mob, and devises a plan to not only get Red Bastian to release Jo but also give himself, and his gang, up; by being tricked into facing something that's far worse then any police bullets or a life behind bars.As he's treating Red Bastian's wound Lee taking his temperature see's that it's normal, 98.6, but tell the shocked gangster that it's 103. Lee tells a shocked Bastain that not only does he but his entire gang, together with Lee & Jo, have contracted typhoid from the well water that they've been drinking. Vaccinating Bastian and most of his gang Lee instead of a typhoid vaccine shoots them up with dope causing the mobsters to conk out before the FBI, who told Lee that they would start moving in on Bastian's hideout in less then an hour, make their move.Lee's actions still didn't prevent a wild shoot-out outside in the Bastian hideout. Since the hoodlums there weren't and couldn't all be vaccinated by him but it prevented an even bigger shoot-out and massacre inside where most of the Bastian mob was. All of this didn't give the film the feel-good ending that you would have expected. Bastian staggering from the influence of the dope tries to make his last stand but is so groggy that he could barley stand on his two feet. Instead of shooting it out with the Feds, and going out in a blaze of glory, Bastian falls down a fight of stairs landing right on his head and into a pair of handcuffs instead.