While he did work across a range of genres, John Ford was mostly known for directing either action-packed, highly influential westerns, or searing historical dramas, either focused on particular individuals from the past, or an entire group at a specific time in America’s history. However, he did make a few forays into comedy, mostly in his earlier years as a director (as well as in the film I consider to be his very best, the charming and romantic The Quiet Man, one of the director’s many peaks as an artist), and even if they aren’t nearly as well-known as some of his more expansive and famous productions, they’re still often very good, functioning as delightful genre films that speak to the director’s own inherent curiosity about a number of very compelling issues, all of which are put on display in these projects. The Whole Town’s Talking is one of his more successful comedies, mainly due to the fact that it blends genres in a way that we didn’t often see from the director – combining comedy and crime thriller, neither of which are normally associated with Ford, but who doubtlessly proves his merit as a filmmaker through engaging directly with their conventions and producing a strong, insightful film that is never quite easy to pin down to a particular set of ideas. It’s not a perfect film, and there are still some flaws deep within it that suggest that the director was still finding his footing with this medium, but it is nonetheless a fascinating experiment that understands everything that needed to be done with the story, and executes them with earnest precision and genuine fondness for its story.

Like any great comedy, The Whole Town’s Talking was conceived through finding one strong element that would form the basis of most of the humour. In this case, it’s the theme of mistaken identity, where the story takes the form of a warped version of The Prince and the Pauper, with a mild-mannered clerk being mistaken (and eventually switching places) with a notorious, bloodthirsty gangster. Polarity is always a good place to start when composing a work of comedy, and screenwriters Jo Swerling and Robert Riskin had their work cut out for them in taking on this narrative, which was adapted from the short story “Jail Breaker” by W.R. Burnett. It may not seem like a particularly complex narrative in theory, since we’ve seen countless instances of great comedies being formed through the most simple and engaging narrative. However, The Whole Town’s Talking has a lot more nuanced than initially meets the eye, and as is often the case with other classic era comedies, there is a kind of multilayered madness that takes place, where a strong theme may be integral to the success of the film, but its the actual execution, in which these ideas are maintained, that makes it interesting and keeps the audience engaged. This is one of the truly captivating aspects of comedies produced during the Golden Age of Hollywood – they seem simple, and they very often are – but simmering beneath the surface is a kind of heady complexity that makes it a far more cerebral experience than simply a series of hilarious moments. Part of the experience here isn’t just laughing along to the irreverent moments, but also falling under the beguiling nature of the filmmaking, which conceals many fascinating secrets and surprises.

Inarguably, Ford was a director who put effort into nearly anything he did, so it only stands to reason that when doing something like The Whole Town’s Talking, which required a strong blend of two genres that may not be mutually exclusive, but don’t always share the same conventions, he would succeed wholeheartedly. While it may not bear many of his distinctive directorial flourishes (if we can even consider the notably versatile Ford from having any, outside of his penchant for certain genres over the others, as well as recurring collaborations with particular actors), we can tell that this film is the product of a director who truly cared about the medium, so much that he refused to waste any time in over-explaining the story, or inserting moments that don’t really carry much weight outside of their relationship to the narrative. Everything in The Whole Town’s Talking is absolutely essential – it’s a bare-boned comedy that finds humour through directly engaging with the story. It can even feel somewhat unfurnished – there are moments of notable tension that occur almost entirely silently, and the lack of a score (the presence of which would be a much more logical step in terms of the thrilling aspects of the story) adds to the macabre, pitch-black sense of humour. Yet, it never feels like it is over-produced, nor that it is anything less than a masterful excursion into the mind of its characters, who are beautifully composed by the screenwriters, and take the original story and breathe life into it, allowing Ford to easily facilitate some incredibly insightful conversations that were somewhat ahead of their time.

At the heart of The Whole Town’s Talking is a very spirited performance (or rather, a pair of performances) by the wonderful Edward G. Robinson, who is playing the parts of both Arthur Ferguson Jones and Killer Mannion. Taking on dual roles is a challenge for any actor, but Robinson is as capable an actor as anyone, and brings a kind of spirited veritas to the role that we don’t often see from actors, even those who have been elevated to almost folkloric status. Robinson had a great deal of versatility as an actor, and this film proves how he could easily disappear into any role – despite the two characters looking identical in every way, Robinson finds nuance in each of them, making them distinct, so that the viewer is never at a loss when it comes to figuring out who we see on screen. The way he carries himself is extraordinary, with the smallest details being responsible for some of the biggest laughs in the film – it’s a wonderfully detailed performance that feels incredibly lived-in and authentic, more than we’d expect from a trained comedian, who would more likely go too far in playing these characters, with Robinson’s more simple approach to developing these characters being one of the primary reasons behind the film’s radical success. Despite rarely making comedies, Robinson proved himself to be incredibly funny (arguably a result of the fact that much of this film depends on the actors around him to bring the humour, with Robinson’s more straight-laced, sombre characters being patsies to the hilarity wrought by his co-stars), and while it may not be his finest work in terms of the depths to which he shows himself willing to go, he turns in an excellent, strong performance.

The Whole Town’s Talking is the rare straightforward comedy for both Robinson and Ford, who are not normally associated with humour, or at least not the kind that this film is making use of. This essentially means that this is something of an experiment for both of them, a film that is mostly a few leaps of faith for the pair, who find themselves working together in perfect synchronicity, being able to capture the spirit of several genres that went into the film’s creation, playing up the humour when it was necessary, but not neglecting the more thrilling, sobering aspects that make The Whole Town’s Talking such a varied experience. Its a relatively minor work in the career of both the director and his star, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting as a work of subversive, Golden Era comedy – it has a lot of humour embedded deep within its soul, and it consistently (and without any fail) manages to be something quite extraordinary, a simple but effective dark comedy with a lot of interesting perspective, and an even greater sense of humour, which ultimately leads to this film becoming an absolute delight in terms of both the narrative and the execution of an ambitious story that evokes as much laughter as it does provoke thought, which is certainly in an abundance, as evident by the sheer amount of outrageous hilarity we are presented with throughout this delightfully odd but purely entertaining crime comedy.