What is a Citadel? It's from 'Cittadella', and means a fortress protecting a city. So, yeah. I'm not quite sure what A.J. Cronin was thinking when he named his novel - which is about the changing attitudes of a doctor - that. Robert Donat plays the initially keen doctor in Wales, trying to combat lung disease caused by mining and marrying Rosalind Russell (His Girl Friday). Here he meets alcoholic friend Ralph Richardson who pops up later in London episode, where Donat is becoming a doctor to the rich and famous, and losing his way. Rex Harrison doesn't help, but there's an Ending in sight.
It was made by MGM-British after the success of A Yank at Oxford and pre-dating Goodbye Mr Chips by a year. Donat is good. Cast also features Emlyn Williams, the playwright and actor, who had contributed to The Man Who Knew Too Much and wrote The Corn Is Green. And Penelope Dudley-Ward, Francis L Sullivan, Mary Clare, Cecil Parker, Nora Swinburne (The River), Felix Aylmer, Dilys Davies (great as grasping landlady).
It was photographed by Harry Stradling and the production design is by Lazare Meerson and Alfred Junge (with some far out London sets, including an illuminated art deco-y lift). Bizarrely, Frank Wead is one of the credited screenplay writers, along with Ian Dalrymple and Elizabeth Hill and Charles Frend is the editor.
I remember when we last watched it (14 March 2011) thinking that the Italian restaurant must have seemed very exotic in 1938. I thought the ending was quite abrupt, but I liked it (you can then play 'what happened next..')
Vidor is I guess best known for The Big Parade and The Crowd. He also directed Street Scene.
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