

A medical researcher is sent to a plague outbreak, where he has to decide priorities for the use of a vaccine.
Acting
Helen Hayes breaks your heart in about twelve total minutes of screen time.
Direction
Ford's plague sequence staging is surprisingly modern and brutal.
Cinematography
Those shadowy laboratory shots? Pure pre-code noir before noir existed.

Director
John Ford
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Sinclair Lewis hated this adaptation so much he tried suppressing it; the Nobel laureate lost to John Ford's ego.
This is peak 1931 'men must sacrifice everything for science' propaganda — the same year women got the vote, Hollywood said 'but what about HIS pain?'