The Whole Town's Talking

This is an atypical and impersonal Ford film. Given the studio (Columbia Pictures) and the screenwriter (Robert Riskin), this is an ideal stuff for Frank Capra. But it remains without a doubt one of the most enjoyable and pleasurable comedies ever made. It features graceful dynamism and vibrancy that are rare in the Ford oeuvre. It is also one of his fastest movies. It contains what it is probably one of the finest Edward G. Robinson performances I have seen. He is outstanding in the dual role of a mild, working class office clerk Arthur Ferguson Jones who is mistaken for a ruthless mobster Mannion (the role he perfected in "Little Caesar"). And then there is the lovely Jean Arthur as Robinson's coolly self-reliant co-worker, who starts by pitying him and then encourages him, and ultimately falls in love with him. She and Robinson are superb together. It is nowhere near her splendid presence in Mitchell Leisen's "Easy Living" and Frank Borzage's "History Is Made at Night", but this was the sort of role Arthur was to make of her own.

A must-see!