Director: Howard
Hawks
Screenplay: Charles
Lederer based on the play “The Front Page” by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
I’ve seen, “His Girl Friday,” I don’t know, nine or ten, times, maybe more over the years. And I’ll be
honest, I have absolutely no idea what the film is about, what the plot is,
what the story is. Howard Hawks was never one who particularly paid attention
to whether or not a film made any logical sense. In his great film “The Big Sleep,”
is notorious for having a plot with many loopholes, like a man killing two
people after he jumped off a bridge. If anything, I’ve actually criticized him
at times being too unrealistic with story, like with “Ball of Fire,” where Gary
Cooper and seven old men live in a college, writing an encyclopedia and doing
apparently everything else together, as they learn about slang from a local
nightclub singer/mobster’s girlfriend in Barbara Stanwyck. Although he’s known
for a few dramas, “Red River,” is considered one of the best Westerns of
all-time, he usually made comedies like this one, and usually screwball
comedies. He was once quoted as saying, “When all else fails, make a drama,”
always looking for the comedic aspects in even the most serious of films.
“…Only Angels Have Wings” is a good example, about pilots running delivery
routes through the Central American jungle.
Hawks was also…, well let me put it
this way, if George Cukor is a “Woman’s Director,” Hawks, is a “Man’s
Director.” A Man’s Man director to be precise. He was often known to ride dirt
bikes, skydive, and race cars all over and around Hollywood and the country,
and most of his films are filled with these kinds of actions. What does this
have to do with “His Girl Friday,”? Not much actually. This movie based on a
play and an earlier film called “The Front Page,” (it’s actually been remade
two other times as well) is about two newspaper reporters Walter and Hildy
(Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell) as they battle, battle wits, connive, screw
over, and help each other out as they do whatever means necessary to get the
next big story, often trying to create the next big story, while somewhere
along the way or at the end, falling back into love. There’s a subplot about
their past marriage, and her current fiancé and something else about City Hall,
all eventually coming together in typical screwball comedy ways. Having seen
the movie a few times, I’d be amazed if there was anything at all that was the
least bit accurate about the newspaper industry in the film. The movie’s
actually more famous for its dialogue, and not just the wittiness of it, and it
is incredibly witty, but also because of the speed of it. This is a 180-page
script that made this ninety-minute movie, and to do that, all the actors not
only had to learn they’re lines to the letter, they had to overlap dialogue
with the other actors constantly, and then speak their dialogue twice as fast
as normal. This movie might seem pale in comparison to people who are used to
watching the fast-paced dialogue of some modern-day TV shows like “The West
Wing,” and “Gilmore Girls,” but at the time, this was unbelievably unusual.
Today, “His Girl Friday,” gets severely overlooked. I’ve seen special edition
DVDs of the film, but I’ve also seen it at the dollar store where it would be
paired with another lesser Cary Grant film that’s not particularly memorable. I’ve
caught it twice this week in the middle of the night, on one of the classic TV
channels we get on digital. I watch it ‘cause it’s funny as hell, and also
because of the manic dialogue of the movie, I catch many funny lines that I
hadn’t caught before, or maybe didn’t remember. Oddly enough, this might have
been a film better suited to Cukor, with witty dialogue and comedy that
could’ve come out of “The Philadelphia Story,” but he might not have known as
Hawks did to force the actors to speed to up, and drive the movie kinetically
towards its nonsensical climaxes. I think Hawks is more hit-and-miss than some
critics and analysts, but I’ll say this, even his weaker efforts are still
entertaining, the man certainly knew how to make great films, and maybe more
importantly, he made great entertainment. “His Girl Friday,” in many ways,
represents a true Howard Hawks film. Wall-to-wall comedy done with lightning-fast
speed, just because he can.
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