Film "The Whole Town's Talking"
Images
Information
Description
Passport to Fame
(The Whole Town's Talking, John Ford, 1935)
Int.: Edward G. Robinson, Jean Arthur, Arthur Hohl. USA DCP. VOSE*. B/W. 93'
Arthur Ferguson Jones, an ordinary man, leads a very simple life. He is never late for work and nothing interesting ever happens to him. One day everything changes: he falls asleep, he is fired as a warning, and he is arrested for his resemblance to the criminal Mannion.
“Of all of John Ford's films, The Whole Town's Talking is the most dynamic, brilliant and funny... Not a work of genius, no, but it is dazzling and virtuous [...] it transforms drama into comedy and, juggling the similarity of two characters, masterfully renews a situation already treated hundreds of times on stage and screen. "Is it not possible that genius, in a creator, also consists in gathering together all the commonplaces, all the clichés, all the most used and worn-out things everywhere, mixing them all together and producing from them something absolutely new, original and personal?" (Jean Mitry)