IT CAME FROM THE BOTTOM SHELF!

Between 1940 and 1944, Preston Sturges wrote and directed a string of seven masterpieces of screen comedy that are unmatched in wit, ingenuity of plot, and briskness of pace — The Great McGinty (1940), Christmas in July (1940), The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan’s Travels (1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944), and Hail the Conquering Hero (1944). However, there was another film written and directed by Sturges in the middle of that run of hits that has been forgotten by all but the most fervent fans of the director. There’s good reason for that. The Great Moment (1944) is not the movie that Preston Sturges envisioned. The film, which Sturges completed in 1942, was held by Paramount for two years, after which it was re-edited into incoherence without the director’s input. The studio’s re-edit of the film was both a critical and box office flop in 1944, and Sturges’ original cut no longer exists for critical re-appraisal. Still, I would highly encourage fans of Preston Sturges to seek out Kino Lorber Studio Classics’ recent Special Edition Blu-ray release of The Great Moment, because it includes excellent supplemental features, which help to put the remains of this compromised film into proper context.

Even without the studio interference, The Great Moment is the odd duck in Preston Sturges’ filmography. Produced between two of the screwiest screwball comedies of all time, The Palm Beach Story and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, The Great Moment was a dramatic biopic set in the mid-19th Century. It tells the story of dentist William Morton (Joel McCrea), who discovered that the fumes from ether could be used to anesthetize patients, so he could perform dental extractions without the patient feeling pain. Before his discovery, dentistry and surgeries of all types were performed without any anesthetic. With the help of Eben Frost (William Demarest), a patient who acts as a promoter for his technique, Morton builds an enormous dental practice. However, when Morton selflessly offers his discovery to the medical community as a whole, he is taken down by others who wish to take credit or profit from his discovery.

Everything about Preston Sturges’ original vision for the film was compromised, including the title. His final draft of the screenplay (which has been published in Four More Screenplays by Preston Sturges) was titled Triumph Over Pain, but the studio settled on the nondescript title, The Great Moment. Sturges’ had envisioned telling the story out-of-sequence with a modern-day prologue and two flashbacks in reverse chronological order. The story would have been told in a non-chronological format similar to Citizen Kane (and to Sturges’ own 1933 screenplay, The Power and the Glory). Sturges also saw the story as an opportunity to combine drama and comedy to an even greater degree than he had in Sullivan’s Travels (1941).

Trouble began after filming and editing were completed. Paramount had more film releases in 1942 than they knew what to do with, so the releases of Triumph Over Pain (as it was still called at that point) and Sturges subsequent The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero were held back until 1944. Despite its risqué subject matter, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek was released more-or-less as Sturges intended. However, when Sturges left Paramount the same year, executive producer Buddy DeSylva (who disliked Sturges) re-edited both Hail the Conquering Hero and The Great Moment (as it was now called). After a bad audience preview of Hail the Conquering Hero, Paramount allowed Sturges to return and fix the movie (without pay). However, either due to lack of confidence in the film or personal grudges against the director, Paramount’s bosses didn’t allow Sturges to reconstruct his “Triumph Over Pain” cut of The Great Moment.

The studio rewrote Sturges’ satirical voiceover introduction (re-writing Sturges is heresy in my book) and inserted a less literate introduction as a title card. They also cut the modern-day prologue scene entirely and re-edited the rest of the film mercilessly. I believe that the re-edits were meant to create a more conventional narrative, but because Sturges’ film was always intended to be told out-of-sequence, there wasn’t the coverage needed to rearrange the story into a more standard form. As a result, the re-edited film ended up being more difficult for audiences to follow, rather than easier. The opening scenes are especially incoherent in their final form.

Still, for fans of Preston Sturges, there is plenty to enjoy in this fascinating failure. Joel McCrea was never better than when directed by Sturges, and what’s left of his performance in The Great Moment is still a notch above most of his other film work. Many of Sturges’ stock company of character actors show up in the film, and they are excellent, as always. Julius Tannen and Louis Jean Heydt get particular showcases in the film. Finally and most importantly, Preston Sturges’ number one supporting star, William Demarest, gets a very showy role, which allows him to display his dramatic, comedic, and physical acting skills.

I suspect that had the studio not tampered with The Great Moment, it would have still been a flop. It wasn’t the type of film that audiences expected from Hollywood’s supreme master of screwball comedy. Moviegoers would have likely been disappointed with the “bait and switch” of a period biopic, no matter how brilliant the film had been constructed. Still, it’s a shame that Sturges wasn’t allowed to fail on his own terms.

USA/B&W-81m./Dir: Preston Sturges/Wr: Preston Sturges/Cast: Joel McCrea, Betty Field, William Demarest, Harry Carey, Louis Jean Heydt, Julius Tannen, Franklin Pangborn, Grady Sutton, Edwin Maxwell, Porter Hall, Esther Howard, Georgia Caine, Jimmy Conlin

For Fans of: The Great Moment may only be of interest to Preston Sturges super-fans, like myself. However, for us, it is a fascinating failure.

Video: Kino Lorber Studio Classics have done justice to this maligned movie with their excellent Special Edition Blu-ray release of The Great Moment. The image quality is much improved over previous DVD releases. The picture is sharper, with better contrast, and more image is viewable on all sides of the frame. The DVD release seems to have been slightly cropped on the edges. There is one odd moment in the new Blu-ray, where the image shrinks to reveal a black frame around the picture, but it only lasts a few seconds before the image expands again to fill the screen. It is a fleeting glitch in an otherwise excellent presentation.

The DTS-HD Master 2.0 channel mono audio sounds great. Both Sturges’ dialogue and the score by Victor Young are well supported.

Where this disc really sings is in the special features. Kino Lorber should be commended for giving this lesser-loved film the special edition treatment. The supplements should help new audiences put the surviving, compromised film in context. The Special Features include:

• Great Without Glory: Introduction by Film Historian Constantine Nasr — I’d suggest watching this introduction prior to viewing the movie. It helps prepare you for some of the irrational cuts that happen early in the film.
• Triumph Over Pain: A Celebration of Preston Sturges (with Preston Sturges’ Son Tom Sturges, Acclaimed Filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich and Documentary Filmmaker Constantine Nasr) — This very enjoyable conversation covers the filmmaker’s reactions to The Great Moment, behind-the-scenes stories of Preston Sturges battles with the studio, and it also touches upon most of the other films that Sturges directed. I’d say that this conversation is more of a reason to purchase the disc than the film itself.
• The original theatrical trailer for The Great Moment
• Bonus trailers for The Great McGinty, Christmas in July, Union Pacific, The Great Man’s Lady, The Virginian, and The Shepherd of the Hills
• Optional English subtitles for the main feature

Streaming: At the time of this review, The Great Moment was unavailable to stream on any of the major subscription services.  It was also unavailable to download as a digital rental or purchase.

More to Explore: Hopefully, you didn’t begin your exploration of the work of Preston Sturges with The Great Moment, since the film doesn’t represent his original vision.  If you haven’t seen all of the hits that Sturges directed at Paramount, I highly recommend that you stop what you’re doing and watch The Great McGinty, Christmas in July, The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, The Palm Beach Story, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, and Hail the Conquering Hero. They are all masterworks of screen comedy.

Trivia: Though The Great Moment was completed by Sturges before his box office hits, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero, it was released after them, as the last Preston Sturges movie made for Paramount. As such, it signaled the beginning of a downturn in Sturges’ bankability, rather than a minor blip in the middle of a string of hits.

For More Info: Three collections of Sturges’ scripts, with background on the productions, have been released by University of California Press. The script and “behind the scenes” information for The Great Moment is in the collection Four More Screenplays by Preston Sturges.  The other two books in the series are Five Screenplays by Preston Sturges and Three More Screenplays by Preston Sturges.