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At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The acting in this movie is really good.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Inspired by true events, this curiously titled drama focuses on the rape of a deaf-mute girl and her subsequent ostracism, thought to be incompetent as a mother by the citizens of the her small town. While the film was nominated for an incredible twelve Oscars back in its day, the film is best known nowadays for Jane Wyman's Best Actress win and she does not disappoint. Wyman conveys volumes without uttering a word and while Lew Ayres is ineffectual as a young doctor who teaches her sign language, the movie has a couple of very strong supporting female performances from Agnes Moorehead and Jan Sterling, both of whom go from just tolerating Wyman to actively sympathising with her. Ripe with melodrama, the overall story is far less engaging here than the individual performances and the film takes an inexplicable amount of time to warm up; the rape does not occur until over half an hour in with lots of awkward comic relief along the way such as Ayres talking to himself and Wyman's father learning how to sign the word 'butterfly'. That said, the film has distinct novelty value as a 1940s movie to broach the subject of rape, and while Production Code was no doubt the chief factor, the film benefits greatly from how the rape is implied but never explicitly shown. Whether it is credible how quickly Wyman bounces back from the rape is another question altogether, but with her limited education, the film handles this quite nicely. She is so innocent and so altruistic in her thinking that she can only smile when she learns that she will soon become a mother.

"Johnny Belinda" is a triumphant story on several levels. The first is obvious - a beautiful but edgy story for 1948 about a deaf mute (Jane Wyman), the ignorance of many around her, and the discrimination against her when she has a child out of wedlock. The child is the result of rape, but no one knows that.The second is the incredible acting by the entire cast: Jane Wyman (who at 31 looks like a teenager), Lew Ayres, Charles Bickford, Agnes Moorhead, Steven McNally and Jan Sterling. They are each in their own way very powerful.The third is the fantastic direction by Jean Negulesco, who really seemed to have his heart and soul into this.The fourth is the vindication of Lew Ayres, whose career was over when he became a conscientious objector in World War II. He was MGM's Dr. Kildare but the series quickly became Dr. Gillespie. People understood conscientious objectors better in the Vietnam era; during World War II, it wasn't understood. Ayres did serve as a medic in World War II. When he came back, Warner Brothers cast him in this, and he won an Oscar.The story of a lonely young woman living on a farm in the desolate Cape Breton and the doctor who takes an interest in her, teaching her sign language, is a beautiful one. The screenplay by Irma Von Cube and Allen Vincent is stunning. This film swept the 1948 Oscars, and with good reason. Highly recommended.

JOHNNY BELINDA (Warner Brothers, 1948), directed by Jean Negulesco, is not exactly the one about an individual character named Johnny Belinda, but that of Belinda MacDonald, a deaf mute girl who gives birth to a child she calls Johnny. Although quite confusing in regards to name reference, there's nothing confusing about the dramatic theme taken from a 1940 stage play by Elmer Harris that served not only as one of the finest movies from the 1940s, but a poignant and touching performance by Jane Wyman.As the story unfolds with off-screen narration about of the residential workers in Cape Breton Island off Nova Scotia, Canada, the plot leads towards its introduction of Robert Richardson (Lew Ayres), a young medical doctor whose taken up residence in the area, with Stella Maguire (Jan Sterling) acting as his secretary who has a secret crush on him. One evening, Aggie (Agnes Moorehead), a poor farm woman living with her brother, Black MacDonald (Charles Bickford), comes to Richardson's home for assistance with her pregnant heifer. During the delivery, Richardson notices a quiet girl in the darkness, Belinda (Jane Wyman), McDonald's daughter, holding a lantern. Told by her father that she's a deaf mute, the doctor takes it upon himself devoting his time educating Belinda in teaching her sign language and lip reading. A quick learner, Belinda proves herself a capable student. One night as her father takes Aggie to visit with her sick sister, Belinda, home alone, is approached by the drunken Locky McCormick (Stephen McNally), one of her father's steady customers, who takes advantage of the situation by making his attack on "the dummy." Afterwards, MacDonald, who notices daughter acting strangely, advises Richardson for help. Feeling Belinda depressed in her own quiet world, he decides taking her to the city for a medical examination. Discovering from the doctor (Jonathan Hale) of Belinda's pregnancy, Richardson does everything in his power to make her life more easier. After giving birth to her boy, Johnny, matters become more complex as the gossiping villagers, believing Richardson to be the father, put him locally out of medical practice and discontinue purchasing wheat from the MacDonalds.With changing tastes in regards to types of movies audiences wanted to see during the post World War II years, tough and graphic "film noir" suspensers and/ or Technicolor musicals were the prime factors of the time. For its melodramatic theme and doses of sentiment, JOHNNY BELINDA seems like an outcast from the silent film era. Jane Wyman's Belinda, whose sensitive portrayal and fragile face could very well have been the sort of role awarded to Lillian Gish under D.W. Griffith's direction had such a product been possible in the twenties. JOHNNY BELINDA does parallel somewhat with Griffith's silent classic, WAY DOWN EAST (1920) set in a poor rural community with a tragic heroine (Gish) who falls victim of gossip after giving birth to a child fathered by a cad. JOHNNY BELINDA, goes a step further with its child-like deaf girl who falls victim of rape, a sequence handled quite discreetly.Regardless of Academy Award nominations for Lew Ayres (Best Actor); Charles Bickford and Agnes Moorehead (with Scottish accents down to the rolled Rs) in the supporting category, the most worthy award went to Wyman whose convincing character portrayal without uttering a single sound ranked one of the best accomplishes ever captured on screen. Once seen, it's hard to forget such key scenes as Belinda's rhapsodic discovery of music at the village dance; the tapping of her feet to the "felt" musical beat; her facial expression of happiness, sadness fear and courage; the reciting the Lord's prayer completely in sign language at her father's funeral; Belinda's tense trial for murder, and Max Steiner's unforgettable musical score. Ayres is a natural as the kind doctor, a role reminiscent to his "Doctor Kildare" portrayal in the medical film series for MGM (1938-1942), with mustache adding to his mature features. Stephen McNally does exceptionally well as the most unsympathetic character, along with Jan Sterling, in her motion picture debut, as his bride whose crucial scenes coming much later in the screenplay.With several TV adaptations to JOHNNY BELINDA over the years, the most recent being the 1982 remake with Richard Thomas and Roseanna Arquette, the original remains quite a moving and unforgettable experience if movie watching. Distributed to home video in the 1980s, and years later on DVD, it's commonly presented on Turner Classic Movies. As JOHNNY BELINDA paved the way for Jane Wyman with better leading roles ahead, nothing can really compare to the one as the quiet girl. (****)

Wyman has the role of her career as a naive, deaf-mute young woman in a small Canadian town in the 19th century who is raped by a local hoodlum. She won an Oscar for her word-less performance, beating out Olivia De Havilland for "The Snake Pit." There are also fine performances from Ayers as a kindly doctor who takes interest in Wyman, Bickford as her tough father, and Moorehead as her aunt. The location cinematography is beautiful and it is sensitively directed by Negulesco. Other than a somewhat melodramatic courtroom scene, it is quite understated and surprisingly mature in handling a controversial subject, given the era in which it was made.