NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

DKosty123 Warner Brothers came up with a winner here. Taking a true story and giving it to Edward G. Robinson with a well written formula script works very well in this one.Robinson plays the man who actually developed a magic bullet cure for Syphilis. While the death scene at the end is pure Hollywood Hype, Robinson plays it well, and the rest of the film is a cut above many films.There are a lot of reasons this film is terrific, though we have now come a long ways from this miracle drug and even with more drugs developed, this one is not the total drug to cure it. HIV came along in the 1980's to recreate the times prior to this cure with a totally new disease mutation. This story is optimistic considering when it was made.Even though this is set in Nazi Germany, there is only one mention of the racism that was rampant under Hitler. They try to throw an Oriental man off the Lab staff. The Jewish issue is not given much attention in this one.At the time it seemed to be, but the second world war and the times really has made this great story a historic footnote. Watching Edward G Robinson in top form with a good script makes this movie well worth watching.

weezeralfalfa If you think Eddie Robinson only played tough little low lifes in Hollywood movies, this film shows that he could convincingly portray heroic scientific pioneers, as well. I don't pretend to have seen the majority of films he played in, as most are not my type. However, his portrayal of pioneer medical researcher Paul Ehrlich is among the few of his performances that stays with me. Just as Muni was born to play Louis Pasteur and Emile Zola, and Kirk Douglas to play Vincent van Gogh, I believe Robinson was born to portray Ehrlich. He appropriately plays him as a more subdued personality than Muni's Pasteur, but not without interest. Certainly, Robinson deserved an Oscar nomination for this role as well as for his riveting performance as Wolf Larsen in "The Sea Wolf", the following year.Now, there is the question of how many of the details of this film are based on fact. Hollywood is notorious for manufacturing biographical details, while ignoring reality. From what I was able to find on the net, there is some fact and some fiction in the details, but the overall gist is reasonably accurate. The film repeatedly portrays Ehrlich's financial and employment insecurities, subject to the meddling of short-sighted politicians and committee members, as well as his up and down relationships with some of his colleagues. In this, he was not unlike his modern academic counterparts. I could find no reference to the adder bite incident, nor the implication that it was important in guiding his later research. His importance in developing a stain for TB is overstated and portrayed wrongly. However, he was instrumental in promoting the general idea of using selective stains to visualize cellular and tissue details, as well as to visualize bacterial pathogens. 1882 was a banner year in the development of selective bacterial stains. Not only did Koch and Ehrlich develop rather similar stains for the TB bacterium, the acid fast stain for TB was soon after discovered, still used today. Meanwhile, Hans Gram was developing his still widely used Gram stain for most bacteria. As portrayed in the film, there was much controversy surrounding the safety, effectiveness and advisability of using Ehrlich's arsenical compounds for curing or preventing the transmission of syphilis. Much of the controversy was instigated by a widely held belief that venereal diseases were rightly God's punishment for promiscuity and thus should not be meddled with. After Ehrlich's death, it was discovered that adding small amounts of bismuth or mercury to the arsenic compound usually increased its effectiveness. Mercury, and the more effective, less toxic, potassium iodide were often administered before this, apparently often with good results. Thus, the implication in the film that there was no effective prior treatment should be qualified.As portrayed in the film, Ehrlich's chain smoking of cigars no doubt hastened his relatively early death from stroke. Surprisingly, it apparently did not exasperate his TB. He did spend some time in Egypt, which did send his early case of TB into permanent remission, demonstrating that 19th century ideas of sun, dry fresh air and rest for treating TB did sometimes work. Unfortunately, this approach was not practical for the mass of working class people.

Air America Though a comment was previously deleted; likely because of the mention of the common name of a disease prominent to the time (I can hazard, no other guess as to the reason); this must really be a unique movie, and I will be on the edge of my seat to view it again and possess the disk for further viewings. It broke the mold for the Hayes censor board with the-then unpardonable mention of Lue's. For Dr. Erlich to persist through 606 compilations is astonishing.An interesting "medical" maxim bringing levity to observers of hip radiographs in some oldsters even as late as the 1960's; often a radiolucent area was noted at the injection sites of the arsenical/mercurial. We used to say, "One night with Venus, and seven years with Mercury," a reference to "exposure" and the subsequent treatment and its length of time and the signs left behind.

Christopher jones How I long for the era when Hollywood was capable of producing films based upon the lives of great scientists and physicians. Current moguls may consider the material too trite, but that just proves how they misjudge quality cinema.Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet is a great old biographical melodrama that probably does overstate certain emotional moments, nonetheless it helps recall the bigger-than-life accomplishments of scientists who otherwise would be forgotten.Edward G. Robinson, though apparently too mature for the role, knew a good script when he read it, and ended up with the finest performance of his long career. Credit goes to the Warner Studio, too, for making a film about the cure for syphilis when even the mention of the disease was prohibited in motion pictures. Those who enjoy films like Edison, The Man will find this more involved with science and less with personal matters than the MGM/Spencer Tracy epic.This is grand Warner's entertainment with a lesson or two for all of us.