"Captain Newman, M.D." (1963) is movie that is hard to classify. It strikes me as an amalgamation of two movies: an unflinching melodrama set in 1944 about an Army Air Force psychiatrist, Capt. Dr. Newman (Gregory Peck) attempting to deal with some cases of post-traumatic stress (PTS) disorder and a comedy-romance with a warm and pretty nurse (Angie Dickinson) and an orderly who, depending on whether he is working for or against one, is savvy or shifty (Tony Curtis, reprising the sticky-fingered part of his role in "Operation Petticoat," but out of any romantic competition herein). A mix of military medicine and slapstick like "M*A*S*H"? No, though Alan Alda might have modeled his portrayal on Peck's.

First the PTS part: There is a ward overflowing with enlisted men, some of whose recurrent tics are shown. The three cases most extensively shown in the movie, however, are not stored in the ward that Capt. Newman "commands." Going downward in rank, the first is Col. Norval Algate Bliss, who had commanded troops in very bloody battles in New Guinea and has split in half (Mr. Past and Mr. Future), plays alliterative word games, and is wracked by guilt about the troops he sent to their death. Eddie Albert, who cracked up spectacularly as a commander in Robert Aldrich's Attack!, was extremely good as the manic colonel whose former self-image as a discipline officer Capt. Newman appeals to with some success. (He also secures information about Col. Bliss's experiences from New Guinea, failing to get any from the colonel.)

The second is paratrooper Captain Paul Cabot Winston (Robert Duvall in his second movie, the first having been "To Kill a Mockingbird," also with Peck), who hid out in a cellar behind enemy lines for more than a year and feels guilty about staying safe there, and has lapsed into narcolepsy and catatonia. The Winstons are a prominent family and a visiting general instructs Capt. Newman to keep Capt. Winston on the Arizona base. Capt. Newman has his own tactic for breaking the shell that has encased Capt. Winston.

The third main (to the movie) case is Corporal Jim Tompkins (singer Bobby Darin), who is a recalcitrant patient (sneaking out each night and getting drunk) in another ward, whom the roving orderly (Curtis) recognizes as clinically depressed. Cpl. Tompkins has to be lured into treatment. Injected with "truth juice," he relives the trauma of being shot down and running away before the plane exploded instead of trying to pull "Big Jim" out of the wreckage.

Bobby Darin received Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for his performance. All three of the performances of deeply traumatized soldiers are excellent. If I had to single one out for an award, it would be Albert's rather than Darin's. Whereas the two of them "act out," Duvall had to "act in" (though he gets an explosion, too).

The psychiatrist is sympathetic and wise, but not too wise. Peck conveys the uncertainty about the tactics Capt. Newman engages in and anguish about his job of patching together the psyches of men who have already been through hell enough so they can return for more. Capt. Newman is not made of stone, and needs some sympathy himself (though not cracking up as Peck's Air Force general did in "Twelve o'clock High"). Peck was, as usual, impeccable and sympathetic (and also received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance). As Lt. Francie Corum, Angie Dickinson supplies the needed understanding and support. Once Capt. Newman becomes her man, she helps keep him together (literally holding him up in one scene). The role is a very conventional 1950s subordinate woman (less independent than those in some movies made during World War II, more like the mother Donna Reed played on tv). Within the narrow constraints of what a "good woman" could do, Dickinson is faultless, and beautiful in an unglamorous role.

I'd rate the PST-treating movie 4.5-5 star. (It is, to take one instance also involving Gregory Peck, a less flamboyant but more realistic portrayal of psychiatric treatment than "Spellbound.") However, there is close to being a whole other movie interspersed with the PST-treating one. This is a generic service comedy (See Here Private Hargrove, McHale's Navy, Hogan's Heroes, The Wackiest Ship in the Army, etc.) that happens to be set in an Arizona military hospital. It is driven by Corporal Jackson 'Jake' Leibowitz (Tony Curtis), allegedly from Jersey City (rather than the Bronx, where his accent is from! and where Curtis was born and grew up before joining the US Navy). Like many Curtis roles, Jake is an operator, in overdrive to stay barely ahead of being busted (James Gregory played the base commander, Col. Edgar Pyser, who believed Newman's whole ward was a set of malingerers). Perhaps the part was written around Curtis (I have not read the long-ago best-selling novel by Leo Rosten, who was also credited as one of four screenwriters). After resisting being assigned to the "nuthouse," Jake adheres to Capt. Newman and takes an interest in psychiatry (reading a huge tome bearing the title of Freud's slender volume The Psychopathology of Everyday Life—and yes, a little Freud is a dangerous thing here as in real life...). With a smattering of Italian, Jake also takes charge of a group of Italian POWs thrown into Capt. Newman's care by Col. Pyser.

This last subplot coulda/shoulda been excised. Another joker in the deck is a herd of sheep. I still don't understand why Capt. Newman was responsible for them, but the scene in which they block the runway is hilarious, which is justification enough for me!

Gregory Peck takes over the role of bemused (if less flustered) commander of the Tony Curtis operator that Cary Grant played in "Operation Petticoat," and does just fine. (Or one could consider Peck's role in this movie as an extension of his immediately previous role, the Oscar-winning turn as the indulgent but wise father in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Except that this father figure has a partner, Angie Dickinson's nurse.)

Despite the hilarity of the sheep and some snappy lines apportioned to Jake/Curtis, I'd rate the military comedy movie 3.5 stars at most. It takes up too much of the running time to be considered merely "comic relief," and the intercutting of two different kinds of movies is disorienting (and I know from the reaction of some viewers to "Malèna" and "The Star Maker" that a movie that shifts from one genre to another is unpalatable to some viewers, let alone one that shifts back and forth).

In my opinion, there is too much feel-good comedy of manipulating the system (the Tony Curtis movie). Perhaps the team of writers and director (David Miller, who had just directed the great modern western "Lonely Are the Brave") thought that such sugar was needed to make the hard medicine (the traumatized soldiers) go down with audiences (but wasn't the gallows humor of Catch-22 a best-seller around this time? Altman's "M*A*S*H" was still seven years in the future). It was better in my view to mix in froth than to show an unrealistically higher rate of success in treatment. Without
spoiling the plot I can, perhaps, note that one treatment failed, one was a technical success (of "The operation succeeded, but the patient died" variety), and one is still alive and beginning to function (but unlikely to be returned to combat) at the end of the movie, as long as I do not indicate which outcome fit which patient. Like the movie, the ending is bittersweet.

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Considering that counterinsurgency breeds PST disorder even more than combat with clearly marked military opponents, "Captain Newman, M.D." is of still-increasing relevance, and VA psychiatrists are scrambling for resources, not unlike Jake and Capt. Newman. Perhaps the movie will make it to DVD one of these days.


Recommended:
Yes