PEOPLE WILL TALK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 662, 14 March 1952, Page 14

PEOPLE WILL TALK

(20th Century-Fox) HE names of Darryl Zanuck and Joseph Mankiewicz in the credittitles of this new production led me to expect something a little more solid than the picture provided. From Mr. Zanuck I expected a bias towards the contemporary social problem, from Mr. Mankiewicz a fresh and antiseptic satirical treatment; but in spite of some entertaining writing the film does not get to grips with anything — even comedy. Several times it looks as if it might. We meet Cary Grant, ‘as Dr. Praetorius, an unorthodox but skilful physician attached to the faculty of a medical school; and Hume Cronyn who appears as a sort of smalltime Senator McCarthy intent on starting a witch-hunt. Jeanne Crain turns "up as an unmarried mother; and there are innumerable sly digs at orthodox medicine and its shibboleths. Put none of these situations or attitudes is developed as it could be. The witch-hunter becomes simply a figure of fun, not the disturbing phenomenon that he really is; Jeanne, Crain’s condition is presented as a romantic complication instead of a social problem, and to contrive any genuine satire at the expense of the American Medical Association would probably be un-American anyway. And yet, though it says absolutely nothing that is fundamentally worthwhile, the picture manages to be entertaining. Cary Grant has the lion’s share of good lines, but old Finlay Currie, after padding through about 10,000 feet in almost complete silence, is allowed one brief speech that is a gem of humour. All the same, I was a leetle bit disappointed.