ABSTRACT

Biopics are tales of men who are famous for one thing or another, be it performing popular songs, about country-and-western star Johnny Cash, or inventing the naturalist novel, or promoting insurgency. William Morton's discovery of inhaled ether is aided by crucial if somewhat haphazard contributions of others at various stages – in other words, scientific advances do not come out of nowhere, as most biopics imply. The main protagonist fits the criterion for a biopic in general, if that is that the central figure should be someone who has had an important impact on a strand of history. In its thematic material, though, the film has more in common with the social conscience pictures of the 1930s, such as I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, rather than that decade's biopics, in that it charts an individual's trip from a world of relative comfort and innocence to one of harsh reality.