Directed by: Jean Negulesco
Based on the stage play by: Elmer Blaney Harris
Starring: Jane Wyman, Lew Ayres, Charles Bickford, Agnes Moorehead, Stephen McNally, Jan Sterling, Rosalind Ivan, Dan Seymour, Mabel Paige, Alan Napier, Barbara Bates, Monte Blue, James Craven, Franklyn Farnum, Al Ferguson, Frank Hagney, Creighton Hale, Jonathan Hale, Lew Harvey, Holmes Herbert, Douglas Kennedy, Colin Kenny, Snub Pollard, Richard Walsh, Ian Wolfe, Ida Moore, Frederick Worlock, Charles Horvath, Blayney Lewis, Alice MacKenzie, Larry McGrath, Ray Montgomery, Jeff Richards, Joan Winfield
102 minutes
(NR - adult themes)
PLOT:
Dr. Robert Richardson, a dedicated young general practitioner, seeks to establish himself in an isolated fishing village on Cape Breton Island off the Nova Scotia coast. The population is poor, and the struggling physician generally gets paid for his efforts in barter. When he meets Belinda McDonald, a young deaf mute callously dismissed by family and neighbors as "the dummy," he alone senses her innate intelligence. He overcomes the initial skepticism of her flinty, gruff father and indifferently cold aunt, who operate a hardscrabble grist mill and farm, and devotes himself to teaching the young girl sign language and lip-reading. Hopes are even raised that she might even eventually qualify for a medical procedure that might improve her condition. Her optimism is crushed, however, when she raped by Locky McCormick, a brutish local fisherman. Traumatized, she is unable to communicate the outrage to her family, who are baffled and angry when they learn she is pregnant. The local gossips blame the doctor, and he and the McDonalds become pariahs, unable to earn a living in the provincial village. Matters come to a head when McCormick and his new wife pressure the local council to declare Belinda an unfit mother and declare them the baby's legal guardians.
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