Gregory Peck can handle a good comedy, even one without covert dramatic intentions. He was fine in the frothy "Roman Holiday." And he was almost as good in "Designing Woman". This comedy in larded with serious incidents and ought to be well within his range. It is, but he and the rest of the cast are undone by a cornball script involving a paternalistic Peck as Captain Newman, in charge of an Air Force psychiatric ward in 1944, and Tony Curtis as the same kind of Jewish scrounger and manipulator that he'd been in "Operation Petticoat." The film begins with a naive conception of a military psychiatric ward. The patients are out of a comic book. The first one we meet is a jokester who plays around until somebody touches the sailor hat he insists on wearing. At that point, the patient snatches the hat away and shrieks that he shouldn't be in the Air Force; he should be in the Navy, protecting his brother. He breaks down and sobs. It's supposed to be a shocking scene. Zzzzz.Too many of the supposedly funny scenes are so corny they could have been dreamed up by a high school wit in some tiny rural town, the kind of kid whose Yearbook caption reads, "Yazoo City's Answer to Bob Hope". Curtis stands on a chair and gets the patients to sing "Old MacDonald". (Funny.) He steals a salami for them. He gives himself a surgical scrub before refilling a tubular container of little plastic cups. He steals part of the general's Christmas tree. I busted a gut laughing. Each of these scenes is treated by the director as if it's hilarious. Curtis is a fine comic actor, among the best in the business, but who could grapple with writing like this and come away the winner? There is one dramatic scene that clicks. It's less because of the way it's written than the juice Bobby Darin injects into it. I won't describe it, but I saw this film in New York when it was released and it's the only resonant scene that has stuck with me, partly because of all the energy. I won't describe it. I clearly remember only one other scene, in which Eddy Albert, as a mad and tormented Army colonel, refers to himself in the third person as "Mister Future" and, in a rare moment of lucidity, asks Peck, with a sideways stare, "Is he -- incurable?" The movie's overall level of sophistication is such that the question actually has meaning within its narrative frame. As if you were "sick" until you were "cured." Robert Duvall, another skilled actor, has a lesser role and gives a credible performance as a schizophrenic. In a catatonic state, a patient may sit for hours without moving. If the patient is moved into another position, he'll hold that one too, even if it's unusual. It's called waxy flexibility, cerea flexibilitas in the text books, and I assume that's what was being shown in the shot in which Nurse Angie Dickonson unfolds Duvall's fingers and places them in a more relaxed position.It just occurred to me that Peck and Duvall worked together in "To Kill a Mockingbird", and that Peck and Eddie Albert were pals in "Roman Holiday." Just had to throw that in. Well, while I'm dealing out trivia, more than one of the officers shown in the film are wearing the UN Korea campaign ribbon, not issued until 1950. Here's another glitch. (These non sequiturs are as easy to pitch as bocce balls.) Peck gets fourteen wounded Italian POWs and when he objects the general shouts that "we happen to be at war with Italy!" Of course, we weren't. Italy had overthrown Mussolini and dropped out of the war in 1943. But who cares about facts when you're desperate for comic situations? One of the comic situations has Curtis teaching the Italians an "ancient Indian song" to sing at the Christmas party -- "Hava Naghila." The movie has too many clichés to count and it's pitched at a low level, but it's not insulting to the viewer and it may be worth a watch.

Just watched Captain Newman MD, what a wonderful film.Although a keen movie watcher just nearing my 70th year I've never seen this film at the cinema or on TV before.I was wondering,whilst watching,why I had not seen or heard of this film before and came to the conclusion(wrongly)that maybe because of the subject matter,ie battle fatigue ,which in certain quarters was not recognised,the film was not generally released.I found it sympathetic,tearful,thought provoking and funny with all the characters adding to a great film.I wish I had recorded this so I could watch it again,but did not,so I will have to see where I can buy it.

Others have noted how this film's "style" hints of the blockbuster "M.A.S.H." that would hit the silver screen in 1970, with its even greater blockbuster TV series that would rule the air waves for more than a decade. Perhaps it took another decade after this 1963 film, which was still so close to the end of WW II and even closer to the Korean War (not yet called a war for several decades), before the American public could warm up to the idea of humor in war-time hospital settings. "Captain Newman, M.D." clearly set the stage, and it did so in great style. And, for its time, it did so without a gratuitous Hollywood romance, and without a running dialog of overly crude language that many filmmakers seemed to like once the "language barrier" was broken by the time of M.A.S.H. This is all to say that this film stands firmly on its own without extraneous scripting or gimmickry to lure viewers. The plot is excellent and has a perfect blend of humor, seriousness and character study and development. Gregory Peck, Tony Curtis and Angie Dickinson give top-rate performances. Larry Storch, Syl Lamont and the many minor roles are all very good. But I think three supporting actor roles stand out head and shoulders above all others. And that's what makes this film soar, on top of the main cast and plot. Some have commented on Bobby Darin's role, and a couple on Eddie Albert's role. Both were clearly worthy of Best Supporting Actor nominations for the year, although only Darin got such a nomination. Add to that Robert Duvall for a first-rate early role in his career. Wow! What a tremendous film with great acting from a very notable cast. This film scores a 10 for the acting, the subject, the considerate way the script and direction handle such a sensitive subject, and its overall entertainment. It's a classic and part of my war films library.This movie came out in December 1963. It was during the Cold War and not long after the Berlin Wall went up. I was serving in the U.S. Army in Germany at the time and didn't get to see many movies. I didn't recall this film at all, and just learned of it in recent years.

Captain Newman, M.D. (1963)Almost twenty years after WWII, a movie that reflected the growing public admission that there were many psychological victims from the war, often ignored or minimized at the time (unlike, say, Vietnam, which was just unfolding, and which demanded a different kind of accountability). And this one is set in the middle of the war, though in an Arizona military hospital far from direct action.The star is certainly the title character, played by Gregory Peck, and Peck is his usual highly respectable self, moral and a natural leader, but likable and willing to take chances, too. That is, an ideal male, in many ways, the kind you might like to have as President, or at least the chief doctor in your hospital. He is, in particular, in charge of the mental ward, and his main intern played by Tony Curtis steals the show, on purpose. While much of the movie is funny, or at least peculiar enough to be ironic and wry, there are moments of heartfelt tragedy and even heartwrenching trauma (especially when a couple of the inmates go berserk). Third in line is a strong, sympathetic nurse (Angie Dickinson) and these three run the ward with unusual verve and intelligence. It clearly is a case in favor of the military giving good psych treatment.There are several interesting patients, as well as a band of Italian POWs brought in for some nice comic relief (and for a reminder that people are people, even if they are enemies). The most famous and unusual is played by Bobby Darin, who I just saw in another movie from the period where he played a patient in an army psych ward, the riveting "Pressure Point." This is a whole different kind of movie, though Darin's performance is strong in similar ways in both cases. Here he even plays an impressive ten seconds on the guitar, and if you watch closely you'll see it's the real deal, not recorded later.The color in the filming is unusually clear and vivid in a realistic way, and Russell Metty behind the camera has made a number of really solid, beautiful, richly colorful films ("That Touch of Mink" and "Imitation of Life" as well as the more earthy "The Misfits"). The lighting is usually fairly bright and broad, though there are some scenes pumped up with shadows. A couple of shots toward the end are oddly filmed against an obvious back projections (when they are rounding up the sheep) which is too bad because otherwise the standards are very high. Director David Miller isn't especially legendary, but he has one terrific film I'd recommend to anyone, "Sudden Fear" made a decade earlier. Here he shows general high production values and a sense of humor (mostly through the endlessly lively Curtis). A nice little colorful film with a gently persuasive subtext.