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The Talk of the Town Movie Review

The Talk of the Town is a 1942 comedy film directed by George Stevens and starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur and Ronald Coleman. This is an unexpectedly good, fun Oscar-nominated flick.

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“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“

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An escaped prisoner has to prove his innocence to a stuffy law professor with the help of a spirited school teacher. How all of this story was set up was both unbelievable and overly convenient. But that is usually the case with most screwball comedies of the time, so I did not have a huge issue with that.

A bigger problem is the movie’s uneven tone – it starts in a dramatic fashion but then it becomes comedic and eventually turning into a romance of sorts. It’s all over the place and I liked all of its parts, but the mash-up should have been more coherent.

But again, I really enjoyed this film and I hadn’t expected that it would be this good as nobody is talking about it nowadays, making it rather underrated. The movie is lively, entertaining and very charming in all of its characters and a solid script. The dialogue is also exceptional, especially in the discussions between the two main men.

The movie is interesting for pairing Ronald Colman and Cary Grant together, which made them both suitable to win a girl, leading to an ending that is somewhat unpredictable and exciting. She still chose Grant’s character in the end, which I expected. That entire sequence was very well executed.

Colman is excellent as this very old-fashioned, dignified professor while Grant is in his usual rascally form here and he was just so much fun as always. But Jean Arthur is the heart of the picture as she often is. She radiates the screen with her charm, goodness of heart and personality. I loved her here.

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The Talk of the Town is very well crafted across the board, though not truly exceptional in anything that it does, but it looks and sounds good nonetheless. Stevens’ direction was commendable and this is one of the more entertaining Best Picture nominees of the year. It was also nominated in six other categories, of which the score and editing nods were most deserved.