The Talk of the Town

A film set in a small town, at once a comedy and a story about the law. Leopold Dilg is accused of arson and manslaughter. He escapes from jail and takes shelter at the house of a woman he knows, Nora. She has let the house for the summer to a professor, who arrives the next morning. Professor Lightcap holds a chair in law and is about to be nominated to the supreme court. He knows the law from books. Introducing them, Nora presents Dilg as someone else. That is the idea: a man who defends the law in the abstract starts living in the same house as a fugitive, and his theory meets reality. As it goes on the professor begins to ask whether the case was actually fair. The register is comic but the matter is serious: how a crowd decides, and how independent a court is. Cary Grant plays Dilg, Ronald Colman the professor and Jean Arthur plays Nora. George Stevens directed. The film received seven Oscar nominations. A solid example for anyone who likes classical Hollywood comedy and three-hander character work. For a viewer expecting pure comedy, it turns serious in the second half and takes up lynching directly.