People Will Talk

A young woman (Jeanne Crain) faints in an anatomy lecture and testing at a nearby clinic reveals she's pregnant. After she tries unsuccessfully to kill herself by shooting herself, Dr. Praetorius (Cary Grant) tells her it was a mix-up. Her results were switched with someone else. They weren't, but he tells her that. Then she flees the hospital, he sets out to find her, things progress from there.

There's also a subplot about another doctor at the university Praetorius teaches at trying to investigate his past because he doesn't approve of his methods, and who thinks he's got something via the mysterious Shunderson, an older gentleman who rarely speaks, and is almost always at Praetorius' side.

The movie plays with the idea that Praetorius has a dark side, based on the descriptions of his work Professor Elwell gets from Praetorius' old housekeeper, plus Shunderson's behavior. He moves very stiffly, his arms not involved in the process at all. He can send an angry dog cowering under the icebox just by looking silently at it. It all seems rather troubling.

There was a Dr. Pretorius in the 1935 Bride of Frankenstein, so I don't know if the movie or the play it's based on were trying to play on that bit of knowledge or not. I was remembering the 1990s The Mask cartoon (based on the Jim Carrey movie based on the Dark Horse comics), and how he had an archfoe named Dr. Praetorius. And Cary Grant has that sort of easy charm where he can doubletalk  or reveal nothing, and someone doesn't necessarily care. A guy like that could get away with a lot.

So my interest was mostly around the mystery of what he's hiding. The romance between Grant and Crain was largely irrelevant, in large part because I didn't see a lot of chemistry. Even Deborah admits that it seems ridiculous she fell in love that fast, and yes, I'd be inclined to agree. It's hard to feel as though Praetorius is pursuing her because he's in love, more that he's trying to stop her from doing harm to herself when she learns he lied to her later.

I think my dad enjoys it mostly because Walter Slezak gets to play a nice guy for once (he plays a German physics professor that's good friends with Praetorius) instead of some sleazy goon or seedy character. I've seen descriptions of the movie as a romantic comedy, and while there aren't a lot of comic bits, the ones there are mostly involve Slezak and Grant busting each others' chops.