Bethune: The Making of a Hero (1990) on Netflix

NR19901h 55mBiography Drama Romance

Norman Bethune heads for China's Eighth Route Army, but a bombing destroys the train carrying his medical supplies. With translator Tung he salvages what is left and sets off for Yan'an.

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Plot summary

In 1938 Norman Bethune arrives in Hankou to join the Eighth Route Army, and the train that was carrying his medical supplies is bombed before he arrives. He and his translator Tung haul the salvaged equipment by boat and on foot toward the army headquarters in Yan'an. Flashbacks cover his earlier years: in 1925 he uses Frances Penny Bethune's inheritance to buy a practice and treats poor patients without charge. Frances, who wants an abortion when she learns she is pregnant, leaves him when he refuses. On the road, missionary Janet Dowd will not let his supplies cross her area, fearing that the Japanese would punish her mission and expel her for it.

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Bethune: The Making of a Hero (1990)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

While filming an artillery attack on a mule train, the Chinese crew could not understand why the production refused to blow up a real mule; special effects coordinator Neil Trifunovich said they wanted to put explosives on the side of the animal's head.
Ted Kotcheff was attached to direct Bethune: The Making of a Hero but left over payment disputes after being offered only $500,000, and he also believed the budget was too low and would run into the same problems as Joshua Then and Now.
Warner Bros. would only finance the film if a major star was cast as Bethune; Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Paul Newman, Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty were listed as possible options, and Redford wanted a script rewrite that Kemeny and Kotcheff could not finance.
Darryl F. Zanuck wanted Walter Pidgeon to play Bethune in the 1940s, and Pidgeon later played him in a radio drama; Sean Connery, Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Plummer and Robert Redford were interested, but Donald Sutherland, who had played Bethune in a CBC television movie, was chosen.
Donald Sutherland called Ted Allan's script "pretentious and two-dimensional and unplayable" and said it was rewritten by Dennis Clark, one of three uncredited writers; Clark claimed he wrote the film and was still owed $30,000 for his work.
Phillip Borsos wanted to tell the story in chronological order, but his edit was rejected by the producers, Telefilm and the CBC in September 1989; the film was recut without him into flashbacks, his 150-minute version cut to 116 minutes.
Shooting in China was halted for a week in May 1987 when the Canadian production crew protested poor working conditions, and the protest added $50,000 to the film's budget.
The film's budget rose from $11 million to between $15-20 million, making it the most expensive film in Canadian history at the time, until Shadow of the Wolf.