In 1936, the world teetered on the precipice of war and peace. Germany had repudiated the Treaty of Versailles and invaded the Rhineland. Italy had conquered Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). The Spanish Civil War had begun. Mankind faced a choice between the light of peace and the blackness of war.Against this backdrop, The Spiral Road opens with Dr. Anton Drager (Rock Hudson) arriving in Java to serve out his obligatory five-year service in the Dutch overseas health service as payment for his medical training. Drager does not plan on leaving Batavia with only "a wrinkled white suit and a slight case of malaria." He has come to study tropical medicine with the legendary Dr. Brits-Jansen (Burl Ives), whose specialty is leprosy. Drager figures he will make a fortune when he returns home to conduct research. His first task as a totok (newcomer) is to convince Dr. Martens, the director of the Netherlands East Indies Health Service, to send him to the field to work with Brits-Jansen. He succeeds--and thus begins his arduous spiral journey into the dark places of man's soul and toward the illuminating brilliance of God's mercy.
In one of his finest roles, Hudson excels as the smirking, self-impressed physician ("I don't believe in fate...I believe in Anton Drager"). He portrays Drager as a freshly decanted doctor, abruptly plunged into swirling waters of plague, leprosy, and madness. But Drager sees it all as just a surreal backdrop to his triumphant march through life. He is a "gold medal winner" in medicine, a man who can conquer all odds by his will alone. He considers himself separate from other people and separate from God. Drager's fiancee, and eventual wife, Els (Gena Rowlands) discovers his ultimate flaw and confronts him: "You don't need anyone. There's only you--that's all there is."
In contrast, Burl Ives exudes crudeness, kindness, practicality and humanity as Dr. Brits-Jansen. He is the Indiana Jones of the Dutch health service. "There are times out here that you need magic," he tells Drager as they fight plague and fear in an infected village. Brits-Jansen represents the doctor that Anton Drager could be--if the young physician follows the "right path" in life. Brits-Jansen believes in his abilities, but he also is humble as their source.
"I take it you don't believe in God," Brits-Jansen remarks to Drager on the way to a leper colony.
"Frankly, no," Drager replies.
Brits-Jansen nods, then tells his young comrade: "Back in so called civilization, you can say there is no God and get away with it. But in the jungle, God pokes those people with his finger and makes 'em squirm a little bit...there are times out here you can almost hear the old boy humming."
When The Spiral Road was released in 1962, neither audiences nor critics were prepared to embrace a Rock Hudson film about an atheist who finds faith in the darkest jungles. Much of the disappointing reaction can be attributed to poor timing--Hudson had recently completed two of his most popular comedies with Doris Day, Lover Come Back (1961) and Pillow Talk (1959). Furthermore, his fans had grown used to seeing Hudson in narrowly-defined roles as a light comedian (Come September), an action hero (Captain Lightfoot), or a soap opera protagonist (Written on the Wind).
The Spiral Road provided Hudson with a refreshing and thought-provoking change of pace. Its admirers view it as a journey that weaves through temptation and despair, and God and man's ego. It presents a world in which people continually encounter each other on and off the road. Some people are returning from shame and some are trudging back in glory.
Wiillem Waterreus (Geoffrey Keen), a captain in the Salvation Army, explains the film's theme and title concisely: "We began in the wilderness, all of us. Lost and afraid. That was the choice: to take the spiral road upward leading to God, or to remain in the darkness and degenerate back to the animal.”
