John Ford directed this comedy, presented tonight in a newly struck, 35mm print. Edward G. Robinson is cleverly cast in the dual role of a gangster, “Killer” Mannion, and the timid store clerk, Arthur Jones, for whom he is a dead ringer. Jean Arthur is the hardboiled gal whom Arthur Jones (timidly) adores. When Mannion escapes jail, it is Arthur who is arrested, only to be sent on his mild-mannered way with a note, given him by the arresting officers, explaining the uncanny resemblance for any future trigger-happy cops. Mannion, no fool, settles into Arthur's life, the note facilitating his own nightly forays.
Andrew Sarris writes in The John Ford Movie Mystery: “The Whole Town's Talking reflected a tendency around the mid-thirties to burlesque the film noir.... As a character star of the thirties, Edward G. Robinson seemed especially eager to let the civilized side of his screen persona poke fun at its brutish side.... Here Robinson was given a dual role through which his Walter Mitty side finally triumphed over his Little Caesar side. This Jekyll-Hyde form of cinematographic trickery was used quite often in the thirties and forties as a fairly elementary exercise in the art of acting out contrasting parts within the same visual frame.... But The Whole Town's Talking was by far the funniest of these double-headed enterprises, and also the most fascinating in reflecting the double thrust of Robinson's career from the mythic malignancy of Little Caesar to the sensitivity and humanity of his more civilized incarnations....
“The Whole Town's Talking is one of the most likable and least likely works in Ford's oeuvre...in retrospect...a more logical assignment for Frank Capra. Ford handles the material...more as a tall story than as a folksy vignette. But it is interesting that Ford is fully sensitive to the spunky working girl beauty and vitality of Jean Arthur a year before Capra made her one of the shining icons of the thirties in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.”