This film is crowded with assets. It starts with children playing in the perfect idylls of a small town, and you start wondering if this might be a children's movie. Then they grow up, and things happen. Two of the girls are unlucky, while the third, the poorest one, almost makes the film by her charm, intelligence and courage: Ann Sheridan, always giving enjoyable performances. Robert Cummings is the one who grows up to be a doctor under the guidance of Claude Rains, who actually is the most interesting character in the story: making a horrible insertion based on a nightmare diagnosis that no doctor ever wishes to face. Ronald Reagan makes the best performance of his life and actually outshines Robert Cummings, they are best friends since childhood here, they are both young and bright in the beginning of their careers, which both tragically ended in Alzheimer. There is a lot of medical ethics here, there are several doctors involved, faced with the conundrum of doing right or wrong. One reluctantly feels the necessity to do wrong in order to avoid something worse, while the other deliberately does very wrong indeed and has to pay for it. Judith Anderson's part is small but extremely poignant in her anguish, refusing to admit or realize that her husband the doctor did wrong, and thus worsening his wrongs by sacrificing their daughter - this is the most arguable part of the plot. It's a great film and human panorama, almost like a novel by A. J. Cronin, while it is all gilded and adorned by a magnificent score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
