--- title: "The Talk of the Town" year: 1942 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-talk-of-the-town" fi1m_score: 75 critics_score: 72 critics_reviews: 4 published: "2026-09-20T00:51:39.248570+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T00:52:17.502616+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Talk of the Town (1942) Directed by George Stevens · 1h 58m · MPA NR · Comedy, Drama, Romance **Fi1m score: 75** · Critics 72 (early) from 4 reviews *In a sentence:* Cary Grant hides in the attic from a lynch mob and comes downstairs to argue jurisprudence over the eggs > George Stevens’s comedy puts a fugitive, a professor and a schoolteacher in one house and lets them talk. The talk is good, the three of them are better, and the film only stumbles when it stops being a farce and starts being a lecture. ## Synopsis Lochester is a New England mill town, and the Holmes woollen mill has just burned down with the foreman inside. Leopold Dilg (Cary Grant), a factory hand who has spent years telling the town what is wrong with it, is on trial for arson and murder, and he does not fancy his chances. He breaks out of jail during a thunderstorm and turns up, ankle twisted, at the house of Nora Shelley (Jean Arthur), a schoolteacher who knew him at school. She has just let the place for the summer to Michael Lightcap (Ronald Colman), a bearded law professor who arrives a day early to write a book in peace. Dilg hides in the attic, then comes downstairs as the gardener, and starts arguing with his landlord about what the law is for. ## Review *The Talk of the Town* wants to be two films at once: a bedroom farce about a wanted man hiding in the attic of a house that has just been let to a judge, and a wartime argument about what the law is for and who it is for. It manages both for most of its 118 minutes. Sidney Buchman and Irwin Shaw, working from a story by Sidney Harmon, write the argument as dinner-table bickering rather than speeches, and George Stevens directs it as if the fate of American justice could reasonably be settled between a man frying eggs and a man reading a newspaper. For a long stretch it can. The setup is dispatched fast. The mill burns, the trial begins, the accused is gone before the first reel is properly under way, and Otto Meyer cuts the escape and the storm so that Grant is already dripping on Jean Arthur’s floor before we have quite worked out what he is supposed to have done. From then on the film lives in the house. Cary Grant plays Leopold Dilg as a man who cannot stop being amused by his own predicament, eyebrow up, stealing toast, and Ronald Colman plays Michael Lightcap as his exact opposite, a man for whom the law is a set of clean sentences and people are an interruption. The beard is a running joke and Colman knows it. We laughed, properly and more than once, and nearly all of it was at the breakfast table, where the gardener corrects the professor’s view of a murder trial and the professor, without knowing who he is talking to, starts to enjoy being corrected. Colman’s face during these exchanges does the film’s real work: a man discovering that he likes an argument he is losing. Jean Arthur runs between them at speed, hiding a fugitive from a judge, a judge from a fugitive and both of them from the police chief, and she plays panic as a form of efficiency. She is the reason the farce works. Without her the two men would simply sit and talk, and pleasant as that is, it is not a film. Ted Tetzlaff shoots the house in soft daylight, curtains and lawn and a kitchen you could live in, and keeps the hard shadows for the town: the courthouse, the mill, the streets at night where Charles Dingle’s Andrew Holmes and his friends decide what justice ought to look like this week. Friedrich Hollaender’s score stays out of the way, which is the right decision for a film built on dialogue, and comes forward only when the picture wants us to notice that things have turned serious. Edgar Buchanan, as Dilg’s lawyer Sam Yates, mumbles through his moustache and lands every line. Rex Ingram, as Lightcap’s valet Tilney, is given more dignity than most Black actors were allowed in 1942 and takes all of it. The trouble is that the film’s two halves do not weigh the same. The comedy is played at a fast walk; the civics is played at a standstill. Every so often someone stops the scene to say what the law means, and although Colman says it beautifully, we could feel the picture waiting for him to finish. Grant, top billed, spends a good deal of the second half off screen or lying low, and the story finds less for him to do than his name promises. There is also a moment late on when the town turns up in a crowd, and it is uglier than anything the comedy has prepared us for. We were startled by it, and then unsettled at how quickly the film asked us to laugh again. Stevens made this between *Woman of the Year* (1942) and *The More the Merrier* (1943), the last of his light comedies before he went to war and came back a graver director, and you can see the seriousness arriving early. It gives the film a weight most romantic triangles of the period do not have. It also gives it about fifteen minutes it does not need. As for the triangle, the script keeps its choice open longer than you expect and we will not say where it lands. See it for the house, the eggs and the three people in the kitchen. When the speeches start, put the kettle on; they will still be going when you get back. *Fi1m score 75, published 20 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (4) - **The AV Club**, Gwen Ihnat (80/100, inferred): The critic highlights the film's unusual love triangle between Cary Grant, Ronald Colman, and Jean Arthur, where the outcome remains uncertain until the end. They praise the witty dialogue by Sidney Buchman and Irwin Shaw along with the strong chemistry and mutual influence between the two male leads as they balance law and passion. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/a-sparkling-hollywood-love-triangle-gave-cary-grant-som-1846217868) - **The New Yorker**, David Lardner (70/100, inferred): The picture offers broad appeal through its mix of comedy, labor themes, and humanism, with everything resolving happily in the end. Jean Arthur stands out as the essential element, handling comedy with natural charm without excess. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1942/08/29/1942-08-29-037-tny-cards-000012480) - **The New York Times**, Bosley Crowther (70/100, inferred): The film is a smart, lively comedy that will make audiences laugh and feel good. George Stevens directs with sly comedic timing, and the script by Irwin Shaw and Sidney Buchman keeps the humor flowing despite some philosophical inconsistencies. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1942/08/28/archives/the-talk-of-the-town-a-smart-comedy-starring-cary-grant-ronald.html) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (70/100, inferred): It serves as solid escapist comedy with topflight direction by George Stevens for the most part. Ronald Colman shines in the transition from stuffy professor to a more human character, though the story gives Cary Grant less to do than expected. [Read](https://variety.com/1941/film/reviews/talk-of-the-town-3-1200413808/) ## Details - **Director:** George Stevens - **Director:** George Stevens - **Screenplay:** Irwin Shaw, Sidney Buchman - **Story:** Sidney Harmon - **Cinematography:** Ted Tetzlaff - **Editor:** Otto Meyer - **Music:** Friedrich Hollaender - **Costume design:** Irene Lentz - **Producer:** George Stevens - **Cast:** Cary Grant as Leopold Dilg; Jean Arthur as Nora Shelley; Ronald Colman as Michael Lightcap; Edgar Buchanan as Sam Yates; Glenda Farrell as Regina Bush; Charles Dingle as Andrew Holmes; Emma Dunn as Mrs. Shelley; Rex Ingram as Tilney - **Runtime:** 1h 58m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 20 August 1942 - **Genres:** Comedy, Drama, Romance - **Budget:** $1 million - **Box office:** $1 million ## Where to watch in the US - Tubi: free, hd, leaving 2026-10-01 - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $12.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: BE, BG, CA, ES, FI, GB, HR, IE, IN, LT, NL, RS, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1943: Best Art Direction, Black and White (nominated); Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (nominated); Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Original Dramatic or Comedy Score (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Story (nominated); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated) ## If you liked this - *The More the Merrier* (1943), Fi1m 82: Stevens and Arthur again, a flat shared by strangers, and the comedy is even faster. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-more-the-merrier.md) - *Mr. Smith Goes to Washington* (1939), Fi1m 84: Sidney Buchman’s other lecture on American law, with Jean Arthur doing the practical thinking. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/mr-smith-goes-to-washington.md) - *Fury* (1936): Fritz Lang on the small-town mob, without the jokes, and it is frightening. - *Design for Living* (1933): Lubitsch’s three-way arrangement, more candid about what the triangle is actually for. - *Boudu Saved from Drowning* (1932): Renoir’s tramp moves into a respectable Paris household and reorganises everyone’s principles. --- © Fi1m Ltd. 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