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Kings Row (1942) | |
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Background
Its screenplay by Casey Robinson was based upon Henry Bellamann's widely-read, scandalous 1940 novel of small-town life at the turn of the century. The Hays Code of 1934 required that much of the questionable, unfilmable content of the novel be modified - eliminating or seriously muting subjects such as illicit premarital sex, homosexuality, a sadistic and vengeful surgeon, and father-daughter incest leading to a murder-suicide. The film's tagline commented on the nature of the town:
The film's main characters were originally five childhood friends, including:
The most memorable and unforgettable scene was Drake's realization that his legs had been amputated -- and his exclamation: "Where's the rest of me?" This would later become the title of 40th President Ronald Reagan's auto-biography first published in 1965 (but updated in 1981). The wartime film was nominated for three Academy Awards with no wins (all lost to William Wyler's Mrs. Miniver (1942)): Best Picture, Best Director, and Best B/W Cinematography. The StoryThe prologue of the film opens in 1890 in a small Midwestern town [Fulton, Missouri in the novel], with the town's sign ironically reading:
The childhoods of the five leading characters is fully introduced:
The film then jumps ahead ten years, as Parris Mitchell studies medicine under the tutelage of his tutor - the stern, secretive, and reclusive local physician Dr. Alexander Tower (Claude Rains). Dr. Tower explains to his student Parris what psychic disorders are:
The young man experiences a tragic and violent love affair with his childhood sweetheart, Tower's emotionally-disturbed, tremulous, agitated and doomed daughter Cassie, who allegedly suffers from dementia praecox inherited from her mother. Dr. Tower murders Cassie because of her insanity, but really because she has become pregnant, and because of her sexual relationship with Parris. Then, the doctor kills himself in an act of suicide. [In the novel, Cassie was afflicted with nymphomania, not insanity. Dr. Tower's diary revealed that the warped doctor had eliminated his wife and then committed incest with his daughter in order to study its psychological effects. He then killed Cassie when she threatened to leave him and go to Parris.] Parris' best friend in town is Drake McHugh, who has married the free-spirited Randy Monaghan. After Parris returns from studying in Vienna and sets up his practice in the town of Kings Row, old friends and enemies from his past confront him. The sanctimonious Dr. Henry Gordon (Charles Coburn), the town's sadistic and vicious surgeon who often performs needless operations to dutifully "punish wickedness," has spitefully amputated both of Drake's legs (to seek revenge for Drake's earlier relationship with his daughter Louise), following an accident in the railroad yards. Louise confronts her father with her strong opinions about his monstrous butchery, and is banished to her upstairs room - and threatened with incarceration in a mental institution:
The best-remembered part of the film is the pained realization by Drake that his legs have been amputated (his body literally 'castrated'). He cries out for Randy as he looks down:
Drake calls for Parris as he sinks back onto his bed. In one of the closing scenes, Parris - after rapidly returning from Vienna to be with his friend, hugs his friend in a joyous reunion, although Drake averts his eyes in shame. To comfort him, Parris places his right cheek next to his friend's face. He attempts to save his boyhood friend from depression and suicide. In the intensity of the moment, Randy leaves the room and invokes the Virgin Mary three times:
As a pioneering psychiatrist, Parris attempts to help Randy persuade Drake that he still has a reason to live, even though Gordon's surgery was deliberately cruel and "unnecessary". (An eyewitness confirms Louise's account: "I looked good at them legs, and the bones in neither one of 'em was broke up one bit.") Rather than conceal the news from Drake and act malevolently by sending Louise to an asylum to cover up her assertions, Parris decides to tell Drake the truth as his doctor. Beautiful, 19 year-old girlfriend Elise Sandor (Kaaren Verne), a new resident of the town from Vienna who resembles Cassie, convinces Parris that he must tell Drake everything:
In the final scene, Parris boldly reveals the truth about Drake's amputated legs and Gordon's butchery, after reciting half of 19th-century English poet William E. Henley's sixteen-line Invictus (meaning unconquerable or undefeated in Latin) - a poem about self-determination. Remarkably, after being told the horrifying news, the crippled Drake refuses to be broken:
Courageously liberated and resurrected, Drake tightly hugs Randy, as he triumphantly grins and laughs:
As an eloquent chorus of Invictus is sung in the background, Parris watches them, and then backs out of the room, quickly goes down the stairs, exits the front door and hurries down the walk through the gate. He runs from the Monaghan house to the Von Eln place. He runs across a long expanse of lawn to embrace Elise in his arms. The film's tremendous, climactic ending never fails to deliver. |