Rent The Talk of the Town (1942)

The Real Star in the Attic - The Talk of the Town review by griggs

Some films arrive with a big star name on the poster, then quietly make you realise you’ve been watching someone else all along. This one belongs to Jean Arthur: brisk, decent, slightly frazzled, and somehow always the smartest person in the room.

Nora Shelley rents out an unoccupied country cottage for the summer, then immediately breaks the house rules by hiding Leopold Dilg (Cary Grant) in the attic — an escaped man accused of arson and murder, and a mill worker with a taste for workers’ rights speeches. The new tenant is Professor Michael Lightcap (Ronald Colman), a celebrated law academic who’s just been told he’s headed for the Supreme Court. So Nora spends the week juggling tea trays, fibs, and two men politely circling each other like cats.

Grant’s charm is the familiar model — nice enough, but oddly low-watt. Colman has dry warmth for days, and Arthur keeps the whole contraption humming. It’s funny, gently romantic, and pointed without preaching.

Comedy Drama. - The Talk of the Town review by Steve

With America now at war, George Stevens would soon be shooting documentaries in Europe and the Pacific right up until '45. Screwball comedy began to fade out in Hollywood. This is a comedy drama with a serious theme appropriate to a global population threatened by fascism; the state of law and justice.

Ronald Colman plays a pompous, unbending- Kantian- academic who visits New England to write a book before his appointment to the Supreme Court. Cary Grant has a more utilitarian view of the law, and is a fugitive from justice, having been fitted up for arson to stop him opposing local graft.

And Jean Arthur is the slightly screwy landlady who mediates and influences Colman to defend the accused. This is styled as a romance and a farce but the love triangle doesn't come to life. The slamming doors are a distraction. Grant plays a more serious role than was customary; essentially a Communist.

Which must have been noticed by HUAC once fighting was over. The screenwriter (Sidney Buchman) was blacklisted. The drama turns on Colman realising that he has to take a side in the fight for civil liberties. It would be a theme of many Hollywood films in peacetime. This articulates the conflict well and the stars make it one of the better comedies of the war years.