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Rating Averages
My Friends |
Not rated. () |
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All Flixster |
(340) |
194 |
1003 |
Female |
(191) |
108 |
562 |
Male |
(149) |
86 |
436 |
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Plot:
The screwball comedy was the definitive genre of the Depression, but as America edged toward war in the early '40s, it suffered some strange and wonderful mutations--none stranger than The Talk of ...( read more 
), directed by George Stevens from a script by novelist Irwin Shaw and frequent Capra collaborator (and future blacklist victim) Sidney Buchman. Cary Grant, awkwardly cast, is a small-town political agitator who is framed for the burning of a local factory; he takes refuge in the attic of a country cottage that landlady Jean Arthur is preparing to rent out to a celebrated law professor (silver-tongued Ronald Colman, perhaps the only actor in Hollywood who could make Grant look like a proletarian). Stevens, suspended between his light '30s style (Swing Time) and his heavy postwar manner (A Place in the Sun), struggles to balance a charming, surprisingly suspenseful romantic triangle with the heavy, debating-society tone of the screenplay, which pits Grant, the representative of a compassionate, emotional sense of justice, against the cool, abstract application of the law advocated by Colman. Caught between these two highly verbal characters, Jean Arthur doesn't have much to do but be adorable and provide the occasional quizzical reaction shot--two things she does with exquisite skill. Stevens and Arthur teamed up again one year later for another strange-bedfellows farce, the marvelous The More the Merrier; in 1953 Arthur made her final film appearance in Stevens's Shane. --Dave Kehr
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Recent Reviews
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MCT:December 16, 2007a pretty used up plotline... such as escaped man from jail who is actually innocent. seen a few of them eh? well me too! it was alright for what it was and the funny moments are what saved this. cary grant carried himself in the usual manner and jean arthur was pretty good in it too! it does seem a bit corny now though. sometimes you get movies that don't age and the problem with this is that it did age
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MCT:June 5, 2006Hmm. I seldom dislike Cary Grant or his movies, but something about this movie just didn't sit right with me. I kept expecting it to be better than it was, and then it... wasn't. And the Jean Arthur character irritated me immensely, with all sorts of bizarre quirks and lines that just didn't make much sense. I guess to sum it up, the movie felt sloppy. It was a good idea for what could have been an incredibly engaging film but the dialogue was shoddy and the characters poorly slapped-together. Too bad.
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