I have to disagree with the previous person's review. This movie is so good and moving and reflects the time it was made in. Jane Wyman does look older than Rock but I think its that horrible short bob of a hairstyle she wears but I realize it was her trademark look throughout her career even up until the TV show Falcon Crest. If you like sentimental movies you can really lose yourself in and really suspend your imagination , you'll love this. Also I couldn't help but notice the similarities in looks between Elvis and Rock, they could've been brothers! All in all, a very good movie.

How to sum up this expensive soap opera? If you can sit through it without either falling asleep or laughing, you're the kind of person who needn't ask for an anaesthetic before your next root canal. I mean -- there is such a thing as going too far, and they have gone it.The photography is splendid -- Big Bear and Arrowhead Lake -- in glorious 1950s Technicolor overreach. The lighting is flat, as it was in the television productions of the period, such as "I Love Lucy." The acting is magnificently abominable. Rock Hundson as a reckless multi-millionaire who believes that, if there is trouble, writing a check for a large amount will make it go away, simply doesn't do the job. He's very handsome at the beginning as a self-testing speedboat racer but was unconvincing. Then, having grievously wounded Jane Wyman, he suffers an unanticipated road to Damascus experience. His reformed playboy is even worse.Nobody stands out. Otto Kruger is always reliable, whether a suave villain or, as here, an understanding and tolerant mentor to Hudson's emotional life. However, he's knee-capped by a stereotypical part -- the sensitive non-materialistic artist -- and it thereby turned into a figure with the animation of a statue in Disneyland's animatronic Hall of Presidents. Maybe Calvin Cooledge.The music is full of heavenly choirs, a sure sign that democracy is failing. The nobility of Beethoven's Ninth, already overused, is mutilated by a thousand and one throbbing vocal chords.I realize Douglas Sirk directed this and that he has a cult following. I don't know why.

dated soap opera with every cliché in the book works best as a look at good production values of the time along with period furnishings, clothes and women's perms; but even if you can stand the plot ploys there are some colossal flaws; one, wyman is a stick, unattractive, prissy, and generally a drip; yet rock falls for her- and wants to date her in the car before she has her accident and he becomes obsessed with guilt; two, he was not responsible for wyman's husband's death; he didn't ask for a respirator, know they had only one, or that someone else might be needing it; three; he didn't cause her accident; he was trying to offer money for the hospital and befriend the cold stick when she bolted out the other door into traffic; four; she could be his mom, and he goes from glamorous girls in the bar to her, again, before he even knows who she is; five, wastrel drunk playboy rock becomes a great doctor; rock, a brain surgeon?; but there is nothing the actors can do about the story; poor agnes moorehead, a firebrand, reduced to head shots with a slight turn and wistful look- no agnes, more wistful than that; it's just dreadful, with score to match

Because now we've got Technicolor, Widescreen, Ross Hunter, Douglas Sirk, and more importantly, Rock Hudson. He takes on the practically impossible task of playing this sinner-to-saint transformation, and almost makes it work, if not totally. Jane Wyman lacks the youthful effervescence of Irene Dunne from the original, but gives a beautifully restrained performance nonetheless. Otto Kruger expands on Ralph Morgan's role of the artist (here a painter instead of a sculptor) who expresses the film's moral.This being a soap opera like premise, it is more than appropriate that the film focuses on two "Guiding Light's", Kruger and the compassionate nurse, played her by Agnes Moorehead who fortunately gets to be somewhat tough in her duties, yet kindly compassionate under that Endora red hair of hers. Barbara Rush adds some more layers to the sweetness of her stepdaughter character.Hudson and Wyman at first seem an odd couple to be paired with in a spiritual secret storm mean to give the matinée ladies a good cry away from the daily viewings of "Love of Life" and "Search For Tomorrow", and the film rises above the stories clichés. Made on the success of another film version of a Lloyd C. Douglas novel ("The Robe"), this takes the life lesson of being kind and helpful to strangers without expecting anything back in return to a modern level. It utilizes beautiful locations and a lush musical score to flesh out its already melodramatic tale. In an era of exotic beauties like Monroe, Taylor, Loren and Lollobrigida (or down home girls like Doris Day), Wyman's box-office success with this is a nice reflection on the 1950's environment where a box in a living room was sometimes keeping people from going to the movies, except, like in the case of this movie, when they really had something worth going to.