“People Will Talk” Next CIFF Student Classic Film Series – April 16

The Coronado Island Film Festival will present “People Will Talk” for the fourth
screening in its Student Classic Film Series.

The screening will take place on Sunday, April 16th, 2023 beginning at 1pm. The event takes place in the Coronado Library Winn Room and is free for middle and high schoolers.  Parents/grandparents/guardians welcome, but no adult may attend without a student.

In the wake of a series of Oscar nominated and Oscar winning films and screenplays, Director Joseph Mankiewicz adapted the screenplay for this 1951 film, People Will Talk, from the Curt Goetz play; a story first adapted on film in 1950, in Germany, as Doctor Praetorius. Exercising his legendary skill with urbane, witty dialogue, Mankiewicz’s adaptation was nominated by the Writers Guild of America as Best Written American Comedy. For those screening the film, however, this begs a question: Is this movie a comedy (romantic or otherwise)? Mankiewicz’s genre-busting screenplay combines comedic, dramatic and mystery elements to examine the conflict between what modern medicine had become, set against this purpose: that the calling of medicine is ‘to make sick people well.’ While doing so, Mankiewicz uses his rapier-like wit to take on the “staid state” of American academia, not so subtly suggesting that the academy’s obsession with reputation and its self-inflated sense of importance as gatekeepers of the professions often contributes to failure in the very vocations for which it claims to prepare graduates.

Cary Grant turns in a velvety smooth leading man performance, combining, as Grant was uniquely known for, dramatic/comic/romantic elements, as Dr. Praetorius. The movie features a number of wonderful veteran character actors, including Hume Cronyn, Margaret Hamilton, Walter Slezak, and a memorably stoic performance by Finlay Currie as Mr. Shunderson, Dr. Praetorius’ mysteriously constant companion. Mr. Shunderson’s climatic retelling of his incredible life story ushers in one of the sweetest and emotionally uplifting surprise endings in Hollywood history.

People Will Talk is the fourth screening in the 2023 CIFF Student Classic Film Series, which runs through the end of May. Screenings are free, but reservations are strongly recommended. For more information and reservations go to coronadofilmfest.com, select the “Year-Round” drop-down menu and “Student Classic Program.”

ABOUT THE STUDENT CLASSIC FILM SERIES

Entering the second season, the CIFF Student Classic Film Series is a cinematic cultural literacy program (how to watch, listen and understand) introducing Middle School and High School Students to the art of film as it first developed and was practiced by the masters of the film-making craft during the Golden Age of Hollywood. While cinephiles may argue, the Golden Age is generally recognized as studio produced, auteur director films made from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s. This era featured a unique mix of economic, cultural, and social conditions, aligned perfectly for making great movies by the score.

The best Golden Age films exemplify peak execution of the technical cinematic craft of storytelling, coupled with exceptional screenwriting by people who learned how to script memorable narrative story lines using a disciplined, tried and true, “Classic” movie-making model. The studio system brought such stories to life by placing them in hands of a small cadre of exceptional directors, to whom they gave access to their remarkable moving-making resources. Those “resources” included well-known “Classic” movie stars under studio contract; but, equally as important, a vast stable of talented, hard-working character actors. These screen actors mastered the techniques of telling stories visually, in ways that still have exceptional power to capture the imagination. All truly memorable films of the Golden Age show virtue in action.

The program began in 2022 with seed-grant funding provided by the City of Coronado Community Grant.