Monday | July 25, 2011 7:00 pm

People Will Talk

Screening on Film

Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
With Cary Grant, Jeanne Crain, Finlay Currie.
US, 1951, 35mm, black & white, 110 min.

Mankiewicz's unusual and racy comedy stars an unflappable Cary Grant as a radical medical doctor under fire by a jealous university colleague determined to uncover dark secrets that will ruin Grant's career. Often read as an allegory for the notorious Hollywood witch hunts that unsuccessfully targeted Mankiewicz himself, People Will Talk also offers a potent depiction of the backstabbing and character assassination that remain a vital staple of American academia. Underappreciated today, Mankiewicz's rapid-fire and razor-sharp screenplay is notable for its uneasy shifts from black comedy to tense drama as well as for its startlingly frank discussion of such still taboo topics as suicide and unwed motherhood. – HG