PEOPLE WILL TALK is yet another Cary Grant romantic comedy, although this one’s lighter on the comedy and heavier on the drama. Writer/director Joseph Mankiewicz opens with a long winded text scroll telling us our main character – Grant as physician/professor at a medical school – may or may not exist, and that if he didn’t, the audience may wish he had. Then it goes on to dedicate the flick to patients.
After this rough start, we’re treated to a scene concerning one of Grant’s colleagues (a fussy Hume Cronyn) who is interviewing Grant’s former housekeeper in an attempt to dig up some dirt on Grant and discredit him. It’s never made 100% clear what Cronyn has against Grant, but apparently Grant’s methods are unorthodox. We never really get a glimpse at what Grant is up to, except that he has great bedside manner and runs a clinic where he specifically pampers the patients. He’s like Patch Adams, without the horror.
Anyway, the cool thing is, the housekeeper Cronyn is interviewing turns out to be none other than screen legend Margaret Hamilton! So, early on, I’m thinking, any movie that opens like this is a movie for me.
Unfortunately, the flick didn’t quite pan out as I’d hoped, and despite a last minute attempt to woo me with a comedic scene featuring a super awesome Lionel train set, this romance wheezes along at a slow pace until it finally ends in the most hackneyed of places, a court room scene.
But, I’m getting a little ahead of myself – aside form intrigue between medical colleagues, the plot also involves a romance between Grant and his patient (Jeanne Crain) who finds herself pregnant out of wedlock. In this sense, the movie is progressive – we hear some pretty frank discussions about what this means for a single woman, how she ended up this way, what her father will think, what her options are, and all that stuff. All the while, Crain’s character is not demonized. Of course the movie stops short of actually discussing abortion, but you can’t help but think about it as the story unfolds.
There is a central plot device involving the pregnancy I will not spoil here, but I will say it does lead the viewer to question Grant’s competency as a doctor. It’s not dealt with very realistically, at least, not as realistically as some of the other issues in the movie, and it’s fairly contrived and stupid. Viewed by today’s standards, it makes Cronyn seem like he has a legit reason to go after Grant, if only he knew.
I’ve typed so much and I haven’t even gotten into the business involving Grant’s mysterious, lumbering assistant (Finlay Currie). Maybe the less said, the better. I don’t know.
This movie does have an interesting dilemma at the center of it, interestingly not really involving the whole pregnancy mess, and that’s the struggle between “accepted” methods of practicing medicine and more “unorthodox” methods. Unfortunately, it’s never really made quite clear what Grant is doing that is so unorthodox – he seems to be an effective physician who actually helps people, so it can’t be that he’s some kind of quack “healer” dealing in alternative medicine. The point is made many times that he’s a real doctor with real credentials. So, what gives? I wasn’t sure what side to take. I know we’re supposed to be on Grant’s side, but I’m not sure why. Because he’s handsome and nice?
There is an interesting premise in this movie that is never really exploited – part of Grant’s backstory is that he once practiced medicine in a rural community full of superstitious, anti-intellectual types. In order to help them, Grant covered up the fact that he was a real, science-based doctor, and allowed them to believe he was using home/folk remedies and salt-of-the-Earth wisdom instead of book smarts and science to cure them. That in and of itself would make an interesting movie, probably more interesting than this one.
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