REGENT THEATRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 July 1939, Page 2

REGENT THEATRE

“PREMIERE” FINALLY TONIGHT. “Premiere” will be shown finally tonight at the Regent Theatre. “THE CITADEL.” “The Citadel.” based on Dr. A. J. Cronin’s best-selling novel of the same name, will be shown at the Regent Theatre tomorrow night. Frosh from Edinburgh. Young Dr. Andrew Manson (Robert Donat) takes up his first appointment as assistant to a doctor in a Welsh Repressed area. He finds the going hard, superstition and custom a great barrier, and almost an entire lack of adequate medical facilities. Here he meets Philip Denny, a brilliant surgeon who has buried himself in Wales in an attempt to forget his wife’s infidelity. Their chief exploit together is the geligniting of a typhoid-infested sewer which the health and local authorities, in their inertia, will not repair. More important still, Andrew Manson meets the schoolmistress, Christine Barlow (Rosalind Russell). Tired of the way he is being imposed upon, Manson seeks a new post in a neighbouring town. When told that one of the qualifications required of him is a wife, he finds Christine quite ready to supply that deficiency. With hope in their hearts they take up their new task, but again there is much the same story. Dr. Manson finds himself in the grip of a restrictive system, his motives suspect, his genuineness resented, and finally his position made impossible. So on to London, where, after struggling for a year in a derelict practice, his fortunes turn, and he soon establishes his reputation as an eminent society doctor. His wife remains true to their first vision, but the ease with which wealth and position come his way deflect Manson from his true purpose. There are many sidelights on what purports to be the way of society medical men in their treatment of neurotic but wealthy women patients. It must be remembered, of course, that while this may be true of some men it should not be said to be true of all —the taking of high fees for comparatively trivial work, the sharing of fees, and the apparent disregard of Hippocratic oath. Manson is brought back to earth by the bungling of an operation on his friend Denny, as a result of which he charges the surgeon responsible with murder. He becomes again the Manson of old. But his association with an academically unqualified American chest expert sees him brought before the English Medical Union to show why he should not be struck off the list for unethical conduct. The peroration to his defence is the climax of the film, which ends with Manson and his wife with their faces again toward the citadel.