The Talk of the Town

1942

Action / Comedy / Drama / Romance / Thriller

11
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 84% · 18 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 84% · 5K ratings
IMDb Rating 7.5/10 10 9804 9.8K

factory fire love triangle romantic comedy romcom trial

Plot summary

Hilarity ensues when a falsely accused fugitive from justice hides at the house of his childhood friend, which she has recently rented to a high-principled law teacher.

Director

George Stevens Photo
George Stevens

Top cast

Don Beddoe Photo
Don Beddoe as Police Chief
Edgar Buchanan Photo
Edgar Buchanan as Sam Yates
Max Wagner Photo
Max Wagner as Moving Man
Frank Sully Photo
Frank Sully as Policeman in Station Wagon
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
1.05 GB
1280*952
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 57 min
Seeds 5
1.95 GB
1440*1072
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 57 min
Seeds 16

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by perfectbond 8 / 10

A perfect mix of comedy and drama

Talk of the Town is an excellent combination of a screwball comedy and legal drama. Grant plays well in both genres and is aided here with very capable co-stars, Arthur and Coleman. The discussions between Dilg and the professor concerning the practical and theoretical aspects of the law are both entertaining in their tit-for-tat presentation and thought provoking in their philosophical content. Jean Arthur is also very charming as the love interest who helps move them to compromise. I thoroughly enjoyed this intelligent, witty, funny, and well-acted film and strongly recommend it, 8/10.
Reviewed by blanche-2 8 / 10

Colman, Grant and Arthur - how can it miss? It doesn't.

Cary Grant is Leopold Dilg, "The Talk of the Town," in this 1942 film also starring Ronald Colman and Jean Arthur. The outspoken Digl is framed for arson and murder and escapes from prison. He ends up in the home of a schoolteacher he's known since childhood, Nora Shelley. She's preparing her home to be rented the next day - except the renter, an attorney named Professor Lightcap (Colman) shows up right then. Since Leopold has a bad ankle, Nora lets him hide in the attic. Though Lightcap wants peace and quiet to write a book, things don't quite happen that way. Nora insists on being his secretary/cook - because she has to take care of Leopold - and every time Lightcap turns around, there's Nora's mother, the police looking for Dilg, furniture deliveries and a delivery of all of Nora's clothing - before he agrees to hire her.Nora and Dilg's attorney Yates (Edgar Buchanan) attempt to drag the brilliant ivory tower attorney into the unfair assumption of guilt of Dilg, but Lightcap refuses. His type of justice, it seems, is all on paper. He doesn't want to get involved with any real people. Leopold, posing as the family gardener, gets into some heated discussions with him, and at Leopold's urging, Nora gives Lightcap special attention. But is any of it enough to make him cave and help Digl? This is a grand comedy with very serious undertones. Who would ever expect two of the most elegant men in film history, Grant and Colman, to be facing off in a comedy, no less, where one of them is very definitely NOT elegant. Grant is terrific, a truly great actor who rarely let his audience see anything but the famous "Cary Grant" persona. Here, he's a man of the people with a clumsy walk and casual clothes. His pantomime to Nora through his attic window of wanting something to eat is hilarious. The bearded Colman plays the role of a stuffy professor very straight. Lightcap is barely able to stand the chicanery of Nora's household at first, as he has a strict routine. Fast forward and he's flirting and dancing with a smart-mouthed beautician (Glenda Farrell) in order to pump her for information about her boyfriend. His acting, particularly his courtroom speech toward the end of the film, is magnificent. Arthur plays Nora as a dizzy, confused and nervous woman, completely thrown as a landlord, a friend and a woman by the appearance of Leopold and the brilliance of Lightcap, as well as his admiration of her. She's torn between the two of them - and keeps the audience wondering.Really a must-see for the lesson that true justice must be not read, not preached, but lived and for the wonderful characterizations and direction by Stevens.
Reviewed by arelx 7 / 10

Comedy with Social Justice Theme

First I read through all the 43 previous reviews to see if anyone saw the same things I saw in this movie. I should say that I had the privilege of seeing the film in all its big-screen glory at the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto, with a live audience who laughed heartily. It was a hard film to watch for someone who has spent too much time in too many courtrooms watching too much injustice, but two things shocked me, though, and the second made sense of the first. Two reviewers did mention what's on my mind, but only part of it. The first shocking thing was that I had to agree with reviewer "Joey the Brit" when he wrote about actor Rex Ingram's "disproportionate, prominent" grieving when his employer, played by Ronald Colman, shaved off his beard. Colman, a law professor, performed this act because, after he had admitted to his landlady and housekeeper Jean Arthur that he had grown the beard to hide his youth while an underage student in law school, she accused him of hiding behind it. Ingram's reaction is truly "disproportionate." The camera focuses on Ingram's face for perhaps a full minute. The black man's face fills the screen as he grieves, and finally a tear runs down his face. It was so out of place, so prolonged, this scene! Why? As soon as Ingram arrives he is full of deference with dignity. His character has been with his employer for 15 years, during all of which time the boss has had the beard. But to grieve for a beard! I forgot my dumbfounded reaction as the plot moved forward, but I watched "Tilney," Ingram's character as the professor's "man," more carefully. The second shock has to do with what reviewer "mitchmcc" wrote, that he/she "would bet that the script was written by a 'progressive,' and that 'social justice' was the real goal here." Given that one of the screenplay writers was blacklisted in the 1950s, that's probably not far from the mark. It wasn't until the last courtroom scene, when the lynch mob bashes their way into the Hall of Justice, that I suddenly understood the significance of Ingram's reaction. It wasn't trivial. I had just been reading about how, in 1936, yet another attempt had been made to pass anti-lynching legislation. It was the best hope of passage there had been since this type of legislation had first been introduced following the Civil War, but many experts blame its failure to pass on President Roosevelt's failure to support the bill. Although it isn't clear to me that Roosevelt's support at that time would have helped to pass it or could have kept it from being repealed by a hostile Supreme Court, it is clear to me that no anti-lynching legislation had been passed by 1942, when this film was released. No such legislation was ever passed. And when I saw that rope in the hands of the lynch mob I knew why Ingram had been weeping. It wasn't for any beard. It was for the one black man or more lynched every month around that time. It may be only a subtext, but Ingram's screen-filling, weeping face made it a powerful one.
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