Search - People Will Talk on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Questionable for Children Movie Release: 1951 DVD Release: 01/06/2004 Format: DVD - Black and White - Closed Captioned Edition: Dual Layered Audio Tracks: English Subtitles: English, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 43 mins Studio: 20th Century Fox Members Wishing: 14 Genres: Comedy Drama, Medical Drama, Social Problem Film

People Will Talk was less a movie than a conduit for the genteel liberalism of screenwriter/director Joseph M. Mankiewicz. Cary Grant plays Dr. Praetorius, an unorthodox medical professor at a sedate midwestern college who seems more interested in the human soul than in the cold facts of the human body. Praetorius' nemesis is a conservative rival doctor (Hume Cronyn) who presses for an investigation of our hero's clouded past--with special emphasis given the mysterious old man (Finlay Currie) who lives with Praetorius and waits on him hand and foot. In the course of the film, Praetorius falls in love with one of his students, an unmarried pregnant girl (Jeanne Crain). At the climactic hearing concerning Praetorius' fitness, the presiding judge (Basil Ruysdael) decides that Praetorius' "modern" methods are more worthwhile than the pragmatic, cut-and-dried theories of his enemies. Based on a German play by Curt Goetz, People Will Talk is a bit too proud of its own cleverness, with Mankiewicz' political planks being wedged in at all the inappropriate times (while conversing with the father of the pregnant girl, Praetorius launches on a gratuitous attack against farm subsidies!) Still, the film is ten times more intelligent than most of Hollywood's 1951 output, and contains one of Cary Grant's best and subtlest seriocomic performances. Bonus: In the first scene of People Will Talk, the snoopy lady who brings Praetorius' "shady" past to the attention of Hume Cronyn is played by an uncredited Margaret ("Wicked Witch of the West") Hamilton. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cary Grant - Dr. Noah Praetorius
Jeanne Crain - Debbie Higgins
Finlay Currie - Shunderson
Hume Cronyn - Prof. Elwell
Walter Slezak - Prof. Barker

People Will Talk might be the best movie that Cary Grant ever made -- the fact that 95 percent of his fans have never heard of it, much less seen it, has nothing to do with its quality and everything to do with when it was made and released. Contrary to popular belief that the 1950s was a totally complacent era in filmmaking, there were a handful of bold movies willing to take on such issues as domestic strife, the blacklist, and the Red Scare. Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront is the best known and most honored of them; Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Val Guest's Quatermass 2, coming from the science fiction genre, found audiences as well and were successful; and then there were the films that didn't get much regard at the time, mostly because they were too far out in front of events and perhaps too clever for their own good. These included Joseph Anthony's Career, Charles Chaplin's A King in New York (perhaps the best of this whole list), and the film at hand, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's People Will Talk. This movie has turned up on television for decades, luring audiences with its cast and teasing them with its surprisingly piercing dialogue and plot, and bothering those same audiences with those same attributes. Mankiewicz, working from a stage play entitled Dr. Praetorius, fashioned a screenplay and a movie that had a lot to do with medicine but even more to do with freedom and a humane and humanistic approach to life and living, and included a savage attack on the HUAC hearings and the Red Scare, and the tactics behind them. (Not coincidentally, Mankiewicz was busy during this same period trying to keep the Rad baiters from taking over the Directors Guild of America.) It may not have done very well in theaters at the time it was released, but People Will Talk has been given nice treatment by Fox Video (ironically, an organization owned by Rupert Murdoch, whose newspapers have never shown any distaste for the blacklist or the consequences of the Red Scare).

The full-screen (1.33:1) film-to-video transfer is beautiful, richly detailed, and full of depth and pleasing contrasts, with a sharp image, whether in the tightest close-up or the widest group shot. The audio has been mastered at a healthy volume level, and includes the musical performance segments (of Brahms' Academic Festival Overture, an essential plot element). The 103-minute movie has been given a generous 18 chapters and comes with the original theatrical teaser and trailer (which never really explain what the movie is about), and a still-frame gallery, plus trailers from other Cary Grant films owned by Fox. One does heartily wish, however, that the movie had been included in Fox's Studio Classics line, complete with audio commentary; the movie begs for that treatment, and anyone discovering this film for the first time will probably want to know a lot more about it. The disc is nicely put together as far as it goes, opening automatically on a two-layer menu that's very easy to use. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide