This Movie I Watched

When we were at the vidie store Saturday, Mr M and I, I was picking out movies. I get to pick the movies because I'm the social director. We got "American Splendor" because I wanted Mr M to see it. And he liked it as I thought he would; in fact, he's now convinced that he and Harvey Pekar are kindered spirits, if not the same person. And by the way, if you haven't seen "American Splendor" go see it immediately, and if you have seen it, go see it again, it's even better the second time. (It went from 4½ to 5 stars for me.)

We also got "School of Rock," not so much because I wanted him to see it, but because I wanted to see it again. Then he sat there and let out a few genuine laughs and ended up telling me the movie was "stupid and predictable." Well, that statement was stupid and predictable, stupid because he laughed during it, and predictable because you have to have a certain level of rock music coolness to like this movie and, well, in a kind way, he ain't got it.

Then I got a movie of my very own to take home with me. I do this sometimes, seeing as how the B'burg video store has a better foreign and classics selection than the B'field one. So in the newly-released DVDs I saw an old Cary Grant movie called "People Will Talk." And it just caught my eye for some reason, so I rented it to take home.

"People Will Talk" tells the story of an unorthodox gynecologist played by Cary Grant. The first thing that makes him unorthodox is that this gynecologist shows up in a room full of medical students and starts going over the ins and outs, so to speak, of a cadaver. The other things that make him unorthodox are his personality ("quirky" would be the key word here) and the fact that everywhere he goes he takes a big hulking stone of a man called Shunderson, whom no one knows anything about.

During his explanation of the cadaver during class, Cary Grant makes an unorthodox woman pass out. The first thing that makes her unorthodox is that she isn't a medical student and she's sitting in class on cadaver day. The other thing that makes her unorthodox is that this is 1950, and the reason she passes out is because she's pregnant without benefit of being married, which she finds out from, of all people, Grant.

It's a blazing coinkidink, a gynecologist explaining a cadaver to a woman not in the class who passes out and then he checks her out later and she happens to be pregnant, but there you go. But hang on, it gets better.

When Cary Grant tells the unorthodox woman (who was Jeanne Crain, btw) she's pregnant, she, of course, goes to pieces. Seems she was torridly in love with a man and, well, got right slutty about it only to have him leave her, but not alone, if you get my drift. So here she is with a broken heart and a bun in the oven, ready to become a social pariah (though she says she cares not about that), and Cary's none too nice about the whole thing, which is actually not that unorthodox for a doctor, because few doctors care at all about the people they treat, right?

So what does Jeanne Crain do but walk right out of his office, after which we hear the sound of a gun and see her crumpled body in the hallway. She's tried to shoot herself through the heart. Lucky most people misjudge where the heart actually is, says Cary Grant, and, boy did she need to be sitting in on those medical classes, because she's shot herself in the side. I mean, people may misjudge where the heart actually is, but I'll be damned if that many think it's on their sides.

In blazing coincidence number two, the classroom, Cary Grant's office, and the hospital are all contained in the same area, so they take her right to the operating room, where we encounter blazing coincidence number three, the fact that gynecologist Cary Grant does the operation on Jeanne Crain, flanked only by his personal nurse and an orderly. I mean, the whole friggin' hospital is devoid of anyone else, save for Hume Cronyn sitting up in a little office trying to ruin Grant's career, which is a shame since he can teach about cadavers, be a gynecologist, and perform surgery on gunshot victims. But that's a whole other storyline. Immediately after the surgery, the orderly and nurse leave and Cary Grant is taking off his mask. And who should waltz into the operating room but - Shunderson, no mask, no surgeon's cap, in a wool suit, and who knows if the man has even washed his hands.

And so, when Jeanne Crain wakes up, after being dumped by the man she was torridly and sluttily in love with just weeks before, she wakes up torridly (but not sluttily, since she's in the hospital with a hole in her side) in love with Cary Grant, whom she's known for approximately 20 minutes and had one conversation with. And Cary Grant shows us just why he's so unorthodox when he decides to tell Jeanne Crain she's not pregnant after all, even though she is. He figures it'll be easier on her that way, at least until she bloats up like a house and the contractions start.

A scant days later, Grant shows up at Crain's house to discreetly tell her father she's pregnant (so much for the privacy act). Apparently he's the kindest man in the world - that's why Crain couldn't tell Dad about the oven bun, apparently he's just way too nice - and by gum, Cary can't tell the man either. So instead he kisses Crain right on the mouth and proposes marriage.

By the way, Crain and her nice dad live on a farm owned by Crain's uncle, who is played by the guy who played miserly Ben Weaver on The Andy Griffith Show, and they have a really cute but mean doggie named Beelzebub. When Shunderson tames Beelzebub by simply staring at him, I was sure the plot was going to take some sort of twist into explaining that Shunderson was in fact God, but if it did do that, I was dull-witted enough to miss it.

So once Grant marries Crain and takes her and her Dad back to his humble home, the Hume Cronyn story starts in, and it's just stupid. We never know why Cronyn hates Grant enough to want him discredited. But they have a big hearing where Grant has to explain his unorthodox behavior in some previous cities, and who Shunderson is, which is the dumbest and dullest explanation they could have come up with. They should have just said he was God. But of course they don't, but they pound down Cronyn anyway and he goes back to whatever rock he crawled out from under, and no, I don't know if Jessica Tandy was waiting for him there.

Now, throughout this whole story, the gynecologist surgeon cadaver teacher is also working on conducting some sort of medical symphony orchestra. For some reason, the big hearing/showdown is on the same night as their big concert. As the newly victorious (and I still don't really understand, victorious over what) Grant goes back to the ballroom to conduct the orchestra, Crain is in the first row with her Dad, and feels the baby kick.

OK, she met him upon finding out she was pregnant, fell in love with him after 20 minutes, he proposed about the next day or two, they married, and now she feels the baby kick. She must have been, what, 8 weeks pregnant? That baby's gonna kill her by the ninth month. And she'll have deserved it. I hope it also falls out of the womb and beats the shit of Shunderson, but spares Grant, because even in a dumb movie he makes things enjoyable.

Even when he's given a line to recite such as this one: "The frightening things we do sometimes when we're afraid to be afraid."

And I gave this movie three stars? It pales in the memory.