Film

Green Light (1936)

Director: Frank Borzage

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Adapted from a novel by Lloyd C Douglas, this is a typically heady brew of medico-religious claptrap. Flynn is a young surgeon, left to take the blame when a patient dies during an operation, who refuses to exculpate himself on realising that the senior colleague responsible (O'Neill) is an old man terrified of total ruin. It's love at first sight when Flynn meets the dead woman's daughter (Louise); but she blames him for her mother's death; so he departs for the wilds of Montana, places his life on the line as a human guinea pig, and comes up with a vaccine against the deadly spotted fever. The jello binding the characters together in a welter of forgiveness and redemption is a wise old crippled cleric (Hardwicke), who assures them that God's red light means man must pause to learn through suffering before getting the green light to go on into eternity. Given that the script comes on like a volubly po-faced sermon, Borzage directs with admirable cool, and gets excellent performances from the entire cast.

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