63/100
Kinda heartening that one can mainline old movies for 35 years and still experience fun discoveries, e.g. that The Whole Town's Talking isn't, as I'd always just assumed from the title and Ford's name, a light ensemble comedy about gossipy rural eccentrics. Actually thought it was one of the Will Rogers movies, to be honest. So I was unprepared for what initially appears to be Ford attempting screwball, with Edward G. Robinson playing against type as a nervous nebbish and Jean Arthur establishing the brassy persona she'd subsequently perfect for Capra and Hawks. An entirely different movie could potentially have been fashioned from what appears to be Whole Town's inciting incident, as EGR's stalwart clerk, name of Jones, happens to oversleep on the very day that the company's president has (a) decided to give him a raise in appreciation of his not once being late in eight years, and (b) declared that the next employee who shows up late will be fired. Likewise tardy is Arthur's Miss Clark, who couldn't care less and promptly offers to quit. What will happen next? If you answered "Jones will be mistaken for his doppelgänger, the notorious "Killer" Mannion, and enter into an Apartment-style arrangement in which Mannion has the use of his bed by day and his governor-signed "This guy ain't Mannion" letter by night, you've got a wilder imagination than I do. Robinson has a blast playing opposite himself, meek vs. murderous, in remarkably good composite shots (I could rarely spot the join, which is unusual for that era; Ford also orchestrates a terrific rear-projection mirror effect that places Mannion behind Jones at one point rather than frame left/right), and he pulls off that neat trick (cf. Jeremy Irons, Dead Ringers) in which you can reliably tell when one of the characters is impersonating the other, even if it's subtle. Bit of a bummer that Jo Swerling and Robert Riskin, who wrote the screenplay, eventually can no longer think of a plausible narrative reason for Arthur to stick around, consigning Miss Clark to offscreen-hostage status alongside a character we've never even met (Jones' aunt); the ending, too, could've been stronger, relying less on chance. Still generally a good time, though. Sole aspect that I might have identified as Ford had I gone in cold: minor supporting characters, Sergeant Boyle and Sergeant Howe, whose running gag involves variations on "Make sure you write that the case was solved by Boyle." "And Howe!"