People Will Talk

This is indeed a very well hidden film which should be up there with North By Northwest, Citizen Kane, and the like. For its time, People Will Talk took on the most controversial topics of the day (even of TODAY) including: abortion, unintended pregnancy, HUAC and McCarthy-style witch hunting, taxpayer-subsidized farming not to grow food ... and the list goes on. Perhaps most up front is the defending of American individualism that was then (and is perhaps more than ever now) under attack. All of this was presented very cleverly, often with wholesome comedy. A great film with top actors, writing and direction. Only the very ending is a bit soppy ... not the least of which is the dopey expression on Carey Grant's face of imbecilic ecstasy while conducting his university's orchestra. Otherwise, it was a nearly perfect film.

How many movies had a score by Brahms? 'People Will Talk' features his Academic Festival Overture, which is the only example of cheerful grandeur I can think of in serious music. Mankewicz knew what he was doing, because this is a cheerfully grand movie. While his 'Letter to three wives' and 'All About Eve' are more famous, this one is my favorite.

For one thing, Cary Grant has never been more attractive, for Dr. Praetorious is a good and humane doctor. "I don't cure illness, I make sick people well." If the notion that a woman bearing a child out of wedlock is a disgrace has gone, the theme of the mediocre witch-hunting the brilliant is timeless.

The phrase 'beloved character actor' could have been invented for Finlay Currie, but you've got to be able to use it for Walter Slezak - at least in this movie. (See "Lifeboat")

If you spend two hours with these people, you'll hear some very splendid talk, and you'll feel both warmed and civilized. How many of today's movies do that?

The screenplay for "People Will Talk" is by Joseph Mankiewicz, who adapted the film from a play and also directed. It has been suggested that the story is an allusion to the workings of McCarthyism, which was active at the time.

From the beginning of the film, there is a level of suspense as this unusual tale reveals itself slowly. Cary Grant plays Dr. Noah Praetorius, a physician and sometime butcher, with the quirky charm that only he can portray. His character has an ebullience and an unconventional approach to medicine that make him seem unprofessional to others in his profession. He has a mysterious friend called Shunderson (Finlay Currie) who is always by his side.

Praetorius meets a young woman named Deborah Higgins (Jeanne Crain) who becomes his patient. He becomes involved in her problems as the film drifts through drama, comedy and romance.

The supporting cast includes some enjoyable appearances. And the film's unpredictability makes for an interesting journey. The Praetorius character might be considered a precursor to Patch Adams. And in one scene he foretells a future that presciently includes "electronic doctors." This film deserves attention for its statements about individualism and nonconformity and for its unorthodox plot construction, which nevertheless works.

This is very unique film. Superlatively written, it offers amusing dialog, social insight and enlightened views of science, women's issues, social mores, the nature of success, materialism and the urge to destroy what we cannot understand.

It is not boring, yet its main characters are doctors/composers, and professors. Though its setting is an elite clinic and a university, it is concerned with real people and their needs.

Cary Grant is at his warm, compassionate and wryly witty best.

His sidekick, so to speak, is the rumpled and likeable Walter Slezak. Hume Cronyn is superb as the little weasel who sets out to "investigate" i.e. slander and destroy the Cary Grant character. Sound familiar?

"People Will Talk" may be considered a comedy of manners of the 1950's and a companion piece to another, similarly-titled Cary Grant film, the lesser-known Frank Capra masterpiece "Talk of the Town." Both are intelligent, thought-provoking, and thoroughly entertaining Hollywood gems.

Don't forgot to check out the "typical farm family..." You'll recognize the narrow-minded, cliche-ridden, hypocritical patriarch of the clan...

PEOPLE WILL TALK may be my favorite film, if you can have such a thing. Loosely based on a German play, Doctor Praetorious, it tells of a Doctor with a unique philosophy. It was quite a step into some sort of cinematic adulthood when a young student who has found herself pregnant from an illicit romance becomes the sympathetic heroine of the movie, finding love with a charismatic doctor.

Some have said this movie was a comment on the McCarthy era, of personal investigations used by jealous men to destroy charismatic figures, and I thought of this movie quite a lot during the Clinton Impeachment proceedings. I kept saying to myself that the defense team could just run scenes from the movie with good effect, especially Shundersun's closing comment Hume Cronyn's character. And Slezak's comments to the same character that he could string together more unpleasant words than any little pipsqueak he had ever known.

And finally this movie offers some wonderful characters, Walter Slezak's loyal professor, Finley Curry's as the mysterious companion, and the dignified if defeated Sidney Blackmer.

I hope someday to read the German play upon which it was based, but as far as I know it was never translated.