Review of Doctor At Large

Introduction

This was the third in the series and Dirk Bogarde`s swansong as Dr Simon Sparrow. Reuniting much of the cast of the first "Doctor In The House", it details Sparrow`s attempts at being a GP before returning to St. Swithins with the ambition of being a surgeon. A gentle medical comedy, the entertainment comes from the parade of eccentric characters that pass through the life of our handsome hero.

Video

Presented in non-anamorphic 1.85:1, the really startling thing about this movie is one of the first title cards which proclaim the picture to have been shot in VistaVision. That, for the uninitiated was a widescreen process that used standard 35mm film passing horizontally through the camera, thus doubling the size of the frame. VistaVision was developed as a rival to CinemaScope in the 1950`s, but was never really taken up due to the need for specialist projection equipment. The format enjoyed a revival in the late 1970`s for filming special effects (in the Star Wars trilogy) because of the larger negative area, although the image was transferred to standard 35mm for projection. Of course, this disc has been mastered from a regular 35mm copy of the movie and there is a little wear and tear on the print. For a forty-five-year-old movie, however, colours are rich and the image is excellent, although slightly soft.

Audio

Audio is mono. As with the two preceding films, the screenplay was by Nicholas Phipps and offers James Robertson-Justice the opportunity to chew up the scenery and the other actors as the epitome of curmudgeon.

Features

Surprisingly, this movie comes with a theatrical trailer as an extra, as well as subtitling. The trailer is typical of British trailers of the time, with a Bob Danvers-Walker narration.

Conclusion

At one time, the Rank Organisation was regularly supplying its chain of cinemas with comedies of this type. They weren`t big movies, they weren`t important movies, and with television still in its infancy they had a regular audience that went out on a weekly basis to see the latest movie at their local fleapit. There are whole generations of audiences who only know these movies now from their appearances on television which are getting steadily rarer and rarer thanks to dedicated movie channels and the whims of trendy programme planners. Without releases like these, the whole British Film Industry legacy would become restricted to a few arthouse titles with the vast majority of great comedies, thrillers or horrors relegated to storerooms where they might moulder to dust. People may look down their noses at titles like these, but personally I think they are as important as anything by - say - Powell and Pressburger, Hitchcock or any auteur you might care to mention. At the very least they`re a record of days gone by and a gentler, more innocent era. Buy it, switch your cynicism off and enjoy it.