In Richard Brooks's directorial debut in Crisis (1950), based on a short story by George Tabori from which Brooks adapted the screenplay, Brooks depicts the personal crisis of an American couple caught up in the post- WWII political crisis of an authoritarian South American regime, loosely evoking the rule of Juan and Eva Perón in Argentina. On the surface, the film is a conventional melodrama about the intrusion of politics into the private life of prominent American neurosurgeon Eugene Ferguson (Cary Grant) and his wife, Helen Ferguson (Paula Raymond), as Dr. Ferguson is given little choice but to perform surgery on an unpopular dictator, Raoul Farrago (José Ferrer), in order remove a brain tumor to save his life and necessarily the life of his corrupt regime. However, Crisis, which was originally titled Ferguson, also attempts to raise important moral questions centered on tensions between the imperatives of the individual conscience and the demands of political and social responsibility that are only partially articulated and incompletely addressed. Consequently, the film works as neither an outright Hollywood melodrama nor a thought-provoking drama about the moral dilemmas of politics. Not surprisingly, Crisis received unimpressive reviews when released, lost money at the box office, and has not been re-evaluated by critics and scholars in hindsight as a stronger film than originally judged. Nonetheless, Crisis deserves further consideration despite its flaws, or perhaps because of them, as the inaugural film of a master director who was notable for his insistence upon artistic excellence, his passion for addressing matters of social justice, and his sensitivity to the demands of individual identity and conscience.