Rating: 
Summary: The judge, the law and the lynching mob
Review: A fire destroys Holmes woolen mills. The foreman is missing, presumed dead. The owner immediately denounces one of his employees of arson: Leopold Dilg (Cary Grant), the one who always makes speeches on street corners. But Dilg escapes before a prejudiced jury can convict him to death penalty. While the manhunt starts he takes refuge with Nora Shelley (Jean Arthur), a high-school teacher on her summer vacation. He causes her quite a trouble, especially since her new tenant, professor Lightcap (Ronald Colman) arrives sooner than expected. Suddenly he appears on her doorstep, complete with his umbrella, derby and dotted scarf, superior, haughty, hard to please...The house is not yet straightened up and he is in a hurry to take possession of his bedroom and get rid of this inefficient woman without delay. But Nora sees through his formal manners and detects a heart of gold beating in his breast. She invents a disagreement with her mother, and then and there he borrows her his pajamas. Dilg's snoring keeps him awake all night and next morning the policemen who rummage through the house keep him on the go. In Nora's eyes he is in the position to help Dilg who had no fair trial("He's the #1 legal genius in this state"). But Dilg is sceptic. He thinks that "Professor Madcap" is only remotely in touch with reality, and right he is: Lightcap declares grandiloquently that "My business is with the principles of law...I can't get mixed up with those local affairs"). While Nora works on his conscience the scent of breakfast reaches Dilg's nose. He leaves his hiding-place and enters an ideological debate with the professor. Big news: "The president will be pleased to appoint you to the bench of the supreme court..." Lightcap, intrinsically valuable, becomes now the precious raw material of Dilg's and Nora's project: the education of a future supreme judge. She takes him to a baseball game where he happens to meet the jovial and biassed judge authorized to decide over Dilg's life or death. This same night he learns from personal experience how it feels to be the victim of a judicial murder when a scalp-hungry deputy sheriff mistakes him with Dilg. He visits the place of the fire. The sight of the foreman's not too grief-stricken girlfriend gives him the idea that the body may be still alive. According to Dilg's plan he even falls in love with Nora. But his good intentions are thwarted when he discovers the morning-paper with Dilg's warrant of apprehension on the front page. He instantly forgets everything he learned lately and decides to call the police. A fight over the telephone breaks out. The two men protest their mutual esteem: "I'm as fond of you as a brother, but I'm compelled to knock you down". During the interrogation Lightcap is surprised how easy lies pass his lips...He parts from his beard and cajoles the foreman's girlfriend ("You're rare. Your beauty makes my head swim...")into divulging her secret. While Nora wonders whom she loves the mob bursts into the courtroom to make "quick justice" with Dilg: lynch him... Ah! If the judicial system were always so noble as Ronald Colman embodies it...This is not only one of the wittiest films of the forties, but the profoundness and substance of its message are valid to this day. The dialogue is hilarious, the timing impeccable and the performances are choice morsels. Cary Grant is terrific in the role of a borscht-loving, chess-playing parlor-red whose gallows-humor cannot conceal his mortal fear. Jean Arthur was one of the most charming actresses ever to grace the screen and Ronald Colman's metamorphosis from academic to live wire under the influence of love is irresistible. Do yourself something good and watch his other films: RANDOM HARVEST, A DOUBLE LIFE, THE LIGHT THAT FAILED...My favorite scene smells somewhat: Colman lends Grant his slippers. Later, when the sheriff hunts Grant with hounds, he puts his slippers on again - and guess what happens!
Rating: 
Summary: Awkward, but charming, political comedy
Review: A manic, mile-a-minute screwball comedy starring Jean Arthur as a sassy, loveable every-gal who has to hide her ne'er-do-well boyfriend (Cary Grant) from the law after he escapes from jail to escape the death penalty (or lynching) for a crime he didn't commit. Seems he's some kind of free-thinker (anarchist, really) who asked too many questions about his capitalist boss, and wound up framed for the murder of his foreman, and the burning of the factory he worked in. As if THAT weren't complicated and far-fetched enough, add in Ronald Coleman, as a prospective Supreme Court judge who just HAPPENS to be the new tenant at Jean's villa, the week that Grant holes up in the attic. The comedy hinges on Arthur's Lucy-like attempts to hide the fugitive without Coleman catching on; the movie itself is meant to hinge on the Capra-esque, leftie-populist plot. Doesn't quite gel, but it is a weird and interesting time capsule, sort of a leftover from the 'Thirties, when socially-conscious films like this were more common (and less out of place; WWII really changed the face of Hollywood, and this seems like something that got left on the shelf a little too long.) Not Arthur's best performance, but Grant has some choice moments sparring intellectually with Coleman's idealistic barrister.
Rating: 
Summary: Leave the flowers where they are
Review: Cary Grant is an innocently accused prison escapee, Ronald Coleman is a stodgy law professor escaping to the country for a little peace and quiet, and Jean Arthur is the woman in the middle.
A little too grounded and deliberately paced to qualify as a screwball comedy, a little too dark and brooding to support the froth of a light comedy, THE TALK OF THE TOWN is pretty much carried on the charismatic shoulders of its three lead stars.
It's a fruitless game trying to piece out a director's intentions, but George Stevens seemed to be striving for comedy with substance here. The opening scenes are very well done - Grant in a prison cell, Grant manhandling a guard through the bars of his cell and escaping into a stormy night. Tight close-ups on Grant's dark and evil eyes.
It's a great set up for a turgid crime melodrama. But the weather clears, Jean Arthur hides him and Coleman arrives. The gag is that Coleman doesn't know who he is, and Grant needs the jurist's help to clear his name.
THE TALK OF THE TOWN never really finds its comedy footings after that first scene. It works hard to do so, but the moody understory - the threat of mob violence if Grant is returned to jail - doesn't help much to lighten the mood. Nor does Edgar Buchanan, here Grant's lawyer convinced of his innocence, contribute what he's capable of. Most screwball comedies benefit from their colorful secondary characters, but Buchanan, a capable comedic actor, is wasted here. Director Stevens seems more interested in the blossoming friendship between Grant and Coleman as they prattle on and on in argument over Ideal and Practical Justice.
Stars can carry a story, and on that basis I recommend TALK OF THE TOWN. Certainly not as a screwball comedy, or really much of a comedy at all.
Rating: 
Summary: A disappointing transfer makes for a dismal film experience!
Review: Columbia Pictures has regressed in their shoddy film transfers of catalogue titles with this DVD. The film, a great screwball adventure that pits a prison escapee (Cary Grant) against a stuffy law professor (Ronald Colman) is about as witty, charming and utterly engaging as one could hope for. Resident studio do-gooder, Jean Arthur is a treat as the woman whose love for the two men is brought to hilarious fruition. As a film, it's five stars all the way! But the DVD is a thoroughly miserable experience with excessive film grain, fine detail shimmering, aliasing problems and varying degrees of stock footage used in the transfer. The hi-def packaging is also deceptive. * Note: the phrasing "remastered in hi-def" means nothing unless the source elements have first been cleaned up. Let the buyer beware! Over all, a mediocre experience. Wait for Criterion to get their hands on it or Columbia to come to its senses and do a restoration.
Rating:
Summary: A disappointing transfer makes for a dismal film experience!
Review: Columbia Pictures has regressed in their shoddy film transfers of catalogue titles with this DVD. The film, a great screwball adventure that pits a prison escapee (Cary Grant) against a stuffy law professor (Ronald Colman) is about as witty, charming and utterly engaging as one could hope for. Resident studio do-gooder, Jean Arthur is a treat as the woman whose love for the two men is brought to hilarious fruition. As a film, it's five stars all the way! But the DVD is a thoroughly miserable experience with excessive film grain, fine detail shimmering, aliasing problems and varying degrees of stock footage used in the transfer. The hi-def packaging is also deceptive. * Note: the phrasing "remastered in hi-def" means nothing unless the source elements have first been cleaned up. Let the buyer beware! Over all, a mediocre experience. Wait for Criterion to get their hands on it or Columbia to come to its senses and do a restoration.
Rating:
Summary: The most secret guilty pleasure on screen!
Review: I can't begin to enumerate all the reasons people should take the time to see this film. It has it all! Comedy, romance, mystery, suspense, drama and Cary showing off his great talent for acrobatics. It's definitely worth a watch or two or...:)
Rating:
Summary: The Talk of The Town!
Review: I saw this movie on TCM, it was on very late and I wound up staying up really late to watch it. It is a good movie and I think Cary Grant, Ronald Colman and Jean Arthur were very good. The Talk of the Town is definitely a classic movie I could buy for my DVD collection and I highly recommend it to any fans of these actors!
Rating:
Summary: The Talk of The Town!
Review: I saw this movie on TCM, it was on very late and I wound up staying up really late to watch it. It is a good movie and I think Cary Grant, Ronald Colman and Jean Arthur were very good. This is definitely a classic movie I could buy for my DVD collection and I highly recommend it to any fans of these actors!
Rating:
Summary: I would have given it five, but for one little detail...
Review: If you don't want to know the ending, read no further. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, at least the first hour and fifty-seven minutes of it. The last minute was the most tragic thing I've seen since A Tale of Two Cities. Why, why, why did Nora go off with a loser like Dilg? Obviously, he was not a man to settle down and behave himself. He didn't even have a vision or dream that made his strangeness admirable. I thought he looked very dark and sinister most of the time and there was absolutely nothing about him that made me want her to end up with him. Ronald, on the other hand, was everything she needed, and if she was smart, she would have snapped him up. I certainly would have. He was intelligent, stable, and madly in love with her. Anyway, you get the idea of my feelings about the two main fellers - Nora Shelley was cute, if a little silly at times (and very idiotic in the last couple minutes of the film). As for the film itself: It was full of great moments. The egg-falling-on-the-newspaper scene was hilarious. The borscht with egg in it was also amusing. It was over all good story, filmed well, told well. I also enjoyed the part when Lightcap was trying to get information out of Miss Bush. He was so artless about it, as well he might be - he probably never went out with a woman before in his life. Which is why he was an awfully stiff dancer, too. So anyway, I'm sure by now you've figured the little detail that cost my rating of this film one star - JEAN WENT OFF WITH THE WRONG MAN IN THE END!! I expect this probably isn't the best review ever and that I'll receive lots of flak from Cary Grant fans, and that is O-K. I still like Ronnie better.
Rating:
Summary: A great screwball comedy with Grant, Arthur and Colman
Review: In the classic screwball comedy "Talk of the Town," Ronald Colman plays Michael Lightcap, a dry, by-the-book law professor who rents the house of school Nora Shelley, played by Jean Arthur, who happens to be harboring a fugitive from justice, Leopold Dilg, played by Cary Grant. Nora passes off Leopold as her gardener, which confuses Professor Lightcap. Judicial corruption and the wacky ways of American justice are satirized, which is a bit depressing when you realize it is 1942 and already things are pretty sad. As Leopold says at one point: "What is the law? It's a gun pointed at somebody's head. All depends upon which end of the gun you stand, whether the law is just or not." Certainly the idea that the less privileged deserve a fair deal is more popular today than it was then, but you would not say this film is really dated in that regard. All three principles turn in great comic performances. Glenda Farrell plays a woman who helps the professor find the real arsonist, and Edgar Buchanan, Charles Dingle and Emma Dunn all have choice supporting roles to play in the proceedings. The crackling dialogue in the script by Dale Van Every, Irwin Shaw and Sidney Buchman from Sidney Harmon's story is excellent but director George Stevens gets the highest marks, mainly because you do not think of him as doing this type of comedy.
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