Bethune: The Making of a Hero

Bethune: The Making of a Hero
Directed by	Phillip Borsos
Written by	Ted Allan[a]
Produced by	Nicolas Clermont Pieter Kroonenburg Jacques Dorfmann Wang Xingang[1]
Starring	Donald Sutherland Helen Mirren Helen Shaver Colm Feore James Pax Guo Da Anouk Aimée
Cinematography	Mike Molloy Raoul Coutard
Edited by	Yves Langlois Angelo Corrao
Music by	Alan Reeves
Production companies	August First Film Studio Filmline International
Distributed by	C/FP Distribution
Release date	27 August 1990 (1990-08-27)
Running time	116 minutes
Countries	Canada France China
Language	English
Budget	$15–20 million
Box office	$400,000<

Bethune: The Making of a Hero is a 1990 biographical period drama film directed by Phillip Borsos. The film is about the life and death of Norman Bethune, a Canadian physician who served as a combat surgeon during the Chinese Civil War. The cast includes Donald Sutherland as Bethune, Helen Mirren as Frances Penny Bethune, Colm Feore as Chester Rice, and Anouk Aimée as Marie-France Coudaire.

Ted Allan, who met Bethune before his death, attempted to make a film about Bethune starting in 1942. He presented scripts to 20th Century Fox, Edward Lewis, Columbia Pictures, and Warner Bros. from the 1940s to the 1970s. John Kemeny and Denis Héroux attempted to produce the film with the aid of the Chinese government in the 1980s, but failed due to financial difficulties. Nicolas Clermont and Pieter Kroonenburg, the operators of Filmline, bought the script after Allan's daughter showed it to them. Borsos was selected to direct the film after Ted Kotcheff left over financial disputes.

The film was in production for five years and was the most expensive film in Canadian history until Shadow of the Wolf. It was an international coproduction between Canada, France, and China. The film was shot in China with the aid of the August First Film Studio in 1987, but financial problems halted production for a year, and shooting was completed by 23 December 1988. The Canadian government's support for the film waned after the Tiananmen Square massacre. The authorship of the film is in dispute; Borsos and Sutherland claim that Dennis Clark rewrote Allan's script, which was "pretentious and two-dimensional and unplayable", according to Sutherland.

The film's long production time delayed its release by two years and caused it to miss its scheduled premiere at the opening of the 1989 Montreal World Film Festival. The film was shown at the 1990 Montreal World Film Festival but failed in its theatrical release before being shown on television as a four-hour miniseries. The film's troubled production was chronicled in Bob McKeown's Strangers in a Strange Land, which was shown at the 1988 Toronto International Film Festival, one of the attempted premiere sites for Bethune: The Making of a Hero.

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