Mistaken Identity Crisis

Suppose you woke up one day and found out that you looked just like Osama bin Laden. Suppose almost everyone you met thought you were bin Laden as well -- including the local police. Suppose some guy tried to collect the reward for bin Laden's capture by ratting you out to the cops. Suppose the only way you could prove you weren't bin Laden was if someone in authority finally vouched for you. And suppose the only way the cops could come up with to prevent a similar mistake in the future was to give you a note verifying to all would-be arresters that you were not actually bin Laden.

Now suppose you came home one night and found out that the real bin Laden had broken into your home and was prepared to steal that note away from you at gunpoint. And that if you didn't cooperate, he would take the note from your corpse's cold stiff fingers. What would you do then?

The above scenario would work just as well if you substituted the name Timothy McVeigh or Jeffrey Dahmer for bin Laden. For the whole point of the scenario is not to draw focus on just one evildoer but to point out how much it would stink if you were a totally innocent person who just happened to look like said evildoer.

Such a scenario is at the heart of 1935's The Whole Town's Talking, a dark comedy directed by -- of all people -- John Ford, a guy not normally associated with dark comedies. Among other things, the film was actor Edward G. Robinson's second attempt at a movie comedy and the true start of actress Jean Arthur's career as a comic lead. (She, of course, had been in comedies before but The Whole Town's Talking was the first such film to get her major attention.)

Robinson plays a dual role as a humble office worker named Arthur Ferguson and a vicious gangster named “Killer” Mannion. Mannion just happens to resemble Ferguson and when a fellow office worker sees Mannion's picture in the newspaper and comments on the resemblance, it starts a chain of events similar to the scenario described above.

Arthur plays one of Ferguson's office workers, a woman named Wilhelmina “Bill” Clark. Initially, she has nothing to do with Ferguson but as events go on, she becomes more and more involved with him. Unfortunately, said involvement ends up getting her kidnapped by Mannion's thugs and it eventually becomes up to Ferguson to save her, an visiting aunt and himself from an early grave. Unfortunately, he does not have a clue how to do that. Not only is he unable to stand up to Mannion but Mannion tricks him into a suicide mission that might end up having Ferguson killed by the local cops.

The Whole Town's Talking can best described as one of those odd comedies -- and yes, it is a comedy -- that were made in the good old days that nonetheless slipped through the cracks and that today are only remembered by a few confirmed film buffs. It is not a perfect movie. Among other things, it sets up a gag involving an untended bathtub that never pays off.

But it is not a bad movie either. And the questions it asks (how do you tell the innocent from the guilty, how do you avoid punishing the innocent, what can the innocent do to avoid such punishment) are questions that are still relevant today. Indeed, if there is one thing that most bothers me about this movie, it is that the questions it asks are not asked enough nowadays -- and are even more rarely answered.