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Best movie of this year hands down!

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Blistering performances.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This is a lovely film with a beautiful performance by Edward Ellis as John Abbott, a doctor who practices among the poor and down in their luck in his home town. The film has an interesting pedigree. It's directed by Garson Kanin and written by Dalton Trumbo. It was made in 15 days for $84,000, in less time than scheduled and under its $100,000 budget.The only print of this that could be found was in the Netherlands, so the subtitles are in Dutch, as are any handwritten notes. Abbott is a widower with a young son, Dick. They settle in Westport, Connecticut. There is no hospital there, and Abbott works sometimes for pigs, potatoes, whatever he can get. After he delivers a baby girl to a man whose wife dies while giving birth, he finds that baby on his doorstep. He names her Jean. She grows up to be Anne Shirley, and Dick grows up to be Lee Bowman. And the two become romantically involved. Times have changed - even though they're not related, you'd never see that in a movie today.One night, Jean's date, Howard Sykes, accidentally shoots her in the arm. It's not serious, but since his father George (Granville Bates) is the richest man in town, Abbott blackmails him into building the hospital. Sykes, in retaliation, makes sure he can't practice there.Edward Ellis was on Broadway and also was a actor and producer there in the early part of the century; he started in films in 1917 and worked into his seventies. In this movie, he was 68 years old. A Man to Remember is sentimental and I have to admit I cried, being a sap. It's about a man who, despite disappointments and resistance to his ideas, contributes a great deal to the world and doesn't let anything get him down. We can all take a lesson from a life well lived.

RKO, Warner Brothers and several other studios remade many films during the 1930s--often less than a decade later. As a result, when watching one of these films, it's common to have a strong sense of déjà vu--realizing after a few minutes that you'd seen this before, but with different actors. As for me, I almost always score the remakes lower as they rarely improved upon the original idea and lack originality.This film is a remake of ONE MAN'S JOURNEY--which was also made by RKO just a few years earlier in 1933. I scored the original film a 7 on IMDb, as it was an exceptional film with fine acting by Lionel Barrymore and May Robson in the leads. This remake, while good, wasn't all that different and starred the relatively unknown actor, Edward Ellis. While Ellis was very good and seemed like a real doctor, he was hamstrung by the fact that Lionel Barrymore was such a wonderful and exceptional performer in the original--it just wasn't possible for him to outdo Barrymore. The biggest names in the film are Anne Shirley and Lee Bowman--neither which were exactly household names! They all did a competent job, but once again you can't help but compare them to the originals.There were a few plot changes, though nothing major. Ms. Shirley's role was expanded in this film and she did NOT return to live with her biological father like in the original and May Robson's wonderful part was eliminated (this was a BIG mistake). Additionally, Garson Kanin and Dalton Trumbo gave the film a strong Populist and anti-big business slant that was NOT in the original film. In the original, ALL the people of the small town tended to take the poor old doctor for granted, whereas here the average common man DID but the evil business men did not. Considering that both director Kanin and writer Trumbo were both later blacklisted in the 1950s for their leftist sentiments, this isn't all that surprising that they'd give this slant. This isn't criticism of their politics--just how flavored this screenplay. This slant didn't hurt the film much at all, but it did tend to portray the rich in a rather one-dimensional manner. On one hand, this made the film more important as a political and social statement, but on the other it totally changed the meaning behind the original film and lacked the sentimentality as well. Still, all in all, this is an entertaining little B-movie that is well worth your time. BUT, if you only want to see one version, I do recommend you see ONE MAN'S JOURNEY--it's just a bit better.A couple final notes. First, the only known surviving copy of the film was in a Dutch archive and has Dutch language subtitles. This isn't usually a problem and you soon don't notice this--except when letters are shown on the screen--they are in Dutch and TCM did NOT provide an interpretation of the writing! Second, a very odd and kind of creepy aspect of this film I didn't mention above is the relationship between Bowman and Shirley. They are step-brother and sister and late in the film, they seem VERY attracted towards each other. While this isn't technically incest, some might be creeped out by this!

Dalton Trumbo wrote the screenplay for this sentimental tale of an unselfish country doctor who cared for rich and poor alike. EDWARD ELLIS is Dr. John Abbott and little DICKIE JONES is his son. Jones was the little boy who supplied the voice for Disney's PINOCCHIO. When an orphan girl is left on Ellis' doorstep, the orphan girl grows up to be ANNE SHIRLEY and LEE BOWMAN is the grown-up Dickie Jones.It's a leisurely tale that moves slowly without the usual melodramatics one might expect in a story of a country doctor--with the only dramatic touch coming well past the midway point with a possible epidemic of infantile paralysis causing the doctor to advise the townspeople to cancel the upcoming country fair. His theory meets with resistance until the feared outbreak occurs and then the townspeople can't thank him enough for all his work.There's a Frank Capra feel to this kind of story, but director Garson Kanin keeps it pretty well in command and prevents the sentimentality from becoming too thick.Summing up: Good, but not quite the inspiring yarn it was intended to be thanks to below level production values and rather routine performances.

This is one of the great unheralded films...called movies in those days...of the century. I saw it the age of 10 and it remained clearly in my mind for 50 years. Now that IMDB has refreshed my memory with the names of the director (Garson Kanin) and screenwriter (Dalton Trumbo), I understand why it remains one of my favorites in the entire history of the cinema.