Times Colonist from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada • 64

Bethune gets the mini treatment By Robert Shaver WHEN CANADIAN doctor Norman Bethune died while serving as a field sureeon for Mao 5 Tse-tung's 8th Army in 1939, he be came a near-mythic nero to tne Ha was the most revered for He administered medicine to loyalist forces fighting against Franco in the Spanish Civil War, where he advanced battlefield surgery by becoming the first surgeon to do blood transfusions in the field. After Spain, Bethune's next major cause was supporting the Chinese communists. After a difficult journey of almost 2,000 miles into the mountains of northern China, he joined Mao's army against the Japanese and promptly set about training Mao's small and ill-prepared medical corps. After touring a small 8th Army hospital near the fighting, the hot-tempered Bethune berated the rebel force Chinese doctors as butchers and demoted one of them to orderly status. The Chinese, characteristically deferential and respectful of authority, were stunned by the outburst of the raving Canadian.

Yet Bethune, with battlefield skills honed in Spain was regarded eigner of the Chinese Revolution and one of the reasons why Canada enjoyed closer relations with China than did most other Western nations during Mao's xenophobic Cultural Revolution of the '60s. His stnrv comes to TV Wednesday and Thursday, Jan. 1 and 2, when CBC airs Bethune: The Making of a Hero, starring Donald butnenana in the title role. The miniseries is a four-hour TV version of the theatrically released film Bethune, which, at $18 million, was the most expen Sutherland: hot-tempered role sive Canadian movie ever maae. Trnuhlprf hv vast cultural differ ences during on-location filming in with awe.

He was, ana stm is, almost a god to the Chinese, a hero of the revolution. Starring with Sutherland are Canadian actress Helen Shaver as Mrs. Dowd, a Protestant missionary who meets Bethune in China and reluctantly agrees to smuggle much-needed medical supplies to him. French actress Anouk Aimee plays Marie Coudaire, a French-Canadian socialist who influences Bethune at a critical stage of his life. Chinese actor Zhang Ke Yaw appears as Chairman Mao.

A brilliant surgeon, the hard-drinking, womanizing Bethune was married and divorced twice to the same woman, his long-suffering wife Frances, played by British actress Helen Mirren. Theirs was a tumultuous relationship strained by Bethune's passion for life and his compassion for people. A convert to communist ideology and a champion of socialized medicine, he was all but ostracized by the Canadian medical establishment and devoted much of his energy to helping those he felt were oppressed by authority. China, Bethune sullerea greatly as a finished product and was generally panned as being laborious and dull. The TV version isn't much of an improvement Yet, despite its flaws, on TV it should succeed in increasing awareness of this remarkable man.

Canadians have never been very good at celebrating their heroes, and Bethune certainly ranks as one of the most colorful and intriguing Canadians in recent Kubrick's Spartacus a first-rate epic tle businessman's wife who, to her family's revulsion, befriends a homeless woman. Tyne Daly is Dol-lie, a brassy bag lady who lives in a stairwell across the street from Pat's swank apartment building and bruins fnllowine her. When Pat's Vmehnnrt Hies, the two women be- allies. Rowlands, one of the glas stars as hunky gladiator slave Spartacus, leading a cast of Hollywood heavyweights: Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Charles Laugh-ton and a nubile Tony Curtis. Spartacus won an Oscar for cinematography; unfortunately, viewers will be able to see only about two-thirds of the restored version since a considerable portion of the image is not shown when widescreen movies are adapted to television.

Gena Rowlands has had plenty of experience playing pariah women breaking out of their cosy domestic worlds. In Face of a Stranger (CBS, Dec. 29), Rowlands most remarkable and unfortu By Felicia A. Feaster ONE OF Hollywood's grandest epics, Spartacus (ABC, Dec. 29 and 30), will air in its newly restored original 1960 form.

Through the collaboration of director Stanley Kubrick, noted for his film adaptations of novels, and black-listed screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, the film transcends the status of the typical historical epic (clanking armor, thousands of extras, opulent sets but virtually no real story) to become a blockbuster of artistic and social relevance, as it depicts the real-life uprising of oppressed slaves and their battle for true nately one of the most rarely seen nptresses working today, should find new admirers in this TV movie. Despite minor flaws, Face is a tollinff of what's auickly becoming urban folklore individ uals reaching out to neip tne less fortunate. stars as Pat roster, a weaiuiy oeai- equality in ancient Rome. iurK juou-.