"...wonderful in a loathsome sort of way..."

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His Girl Friday (1940)

Directed and Produced by Howard Hawks
Cinematography by Joseph Walker
Edited by Gene Havlick
Screenplay by Charles Lederer
Based on the 1928 play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
Starring Rosalind Russell, Cary Grant, Ralph Bellamy and Gene Lockhart


Originally released January 11th, 1940.


     I was in a first year high school film class the first time I realized people don't all absorb movies the same way. "What did you think of it, Timmy (I don't remember his real name, so let's just call him Timmy)?", our teacher asked after we'd finished a movie. "I didn't like it.", replied Timmy with a I'm-14-and-have-just-discovered-the-wonders-of-apathy shrug. "And why not?", my naive and ever encouraging film teacher queried. A brief pause returned from Timmy, his hormone addled brain sifting through his ever growing mental catalog of Internet porn to find an answer he deemed suitable. "It was black and white." Being the academic, sheltered film nerd I was (and obviously still am), I was completely taken aback. My mental mouth hung agape in indignant shock. What the fUCK!? What a dumb fucking reason to dismiss something! I'll speak more on Timmy in the post script, but the point he serves in this review is that I think about that moment every time I watch an older film, shot in black and white. I picture his dumb face giggling to his equally dumb friends like he made a real funny joke or some shit. Needless to say, as I am still that aforementioned film nerd, I think about Timmy and his dumb face often. I thought of it when I sat down to revisit an old favourite this week. His Girl Friday is a witty, fast paced dramedy that treats a professional woman with surprising respect for it's era and shows us a young Cary Grant unbuttoning his shirt. An embarrassment of riches, really. It's an hour and a half of fun, satisfying banter between two gorgeous white people in beautiful cloths that eventually (and unsurprisingly) disappear into Cary Grants chin cleft, as we all will some day.

From top to bottom; Ralph Bellamy,
Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant.

     Hildy Johnson (Russell) is a sharp, quick witted and charming ex reporter. She left the game when she divorced her husband and coworker, editor Walter Burns (Grant). Our film opens with her first visit to the office since she left. She's there to tell Burns she's getting remarried, to an insurance salesman named Bruce Baldwin (Bellamy). This is news he's not happy to hear, but he loves Hildy, and initially gives her his blessing (not that she needed it, but this is a genuinely complicated relationship, so I won't judge too harshly). Over the course of having lunch with her and her new fiance before they leave town, however, he realizes what fool he was to let her go so easy and formulates a plan to make her stay on at the paper, and ultimately, with him. He presents her with a story he knows she won't be able to pass up covering, thinking writing again will remind her how much she loves it. The story; an innocent man will be hung early the next day, and he convinces her that she could save his life by writing a profile and publishing it in the evening edition. She agrees to to do it, but is at the same time plotting to defraud her scheming ex husband and trick him out of his life savings. Hilarity ensues when they both try to enact their respective plans on each other at the same time. That's pretty much the gist of it.

*Cary Grant voice* "That looks infected, my dear..."

     So because this was based on a play, it feels very much like a play. In addition to feeling very structurally like a play, it kinda looks like one too. The common shooting style of early Hollywood movies was super simple. Most scenes were made up of almost exclusively long running medium shots. Obviously there were exceptions to this, usually films made by grandiose auteurs (Orson, I'm looking at you) or people with more money than they knew what to do with (Gone With the Wind (1939) can shove it's massive budget up it's own racist ass). Those who pushed the technical envelope often ended up changing the game. Right after Citizen Kane (1941), Orson Wells made The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). In it, there's a scene where Wells insisted on moving the heavy, loud camera through the ballroom of a real old house. They ended up just foleying the whole scene because the camera rolling over the wooden floorboards was so loud, but the result is pretty seamless. In fact, there's nothing else of that era like that long shot. It's akin to watching Marilyn Monroe use an iphone. Anyway, His Girl Friday is not like that. It's very very static. I can recall seeing only two dynamic shots. One shot in the beginning has some layered action and couple of focus pulls. One at the end uses fast pans back and forth to emphasize a humorously frantic tone in the scene. Almost everything else is a loosely framed two shot (occupied primarily by Cary Grant's chin) that pans slowly back and forth with the actors across the set (and that aforementioned chin).

Sadly, this is not a shot in the movie. Just a production still :(

      I believe that good banter in movies and television is basically a 50/50 equation. If a good script doesn't have the performances to hold it up and vice versa, they'll both ultimately fall fail. This is of course a simplified explanation of a very nuanced relationship. Essentially, the screenwriter entrusts the overall result of their work to the people delivering it, and even the best actor can't shine through garbage material. We'll talk about the chemistry between Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell later on, but for now, lets focus on this unbelievable screenplay. Structurally, it's nothing special. Boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy tries to win girl back, girl tries to commit insurance fraud. Pretty standard stuff. But the dialogue is the real attraction here. I think most of the story points are true to the play. The Hildy character in the play is a man, so most of the dialogue was rewritten for the movie. But regardless of who's primarily responsible for it, its a masterful example of writing chemistry. There's of course that element of chemistry that can't be written, and that's up to the actors. The dialogue here gives you everything you need to know about the characters and their dynamic while the specifics of their conversation often only hint at personality traits. It's conveyed in what they say and how they say it. That may seem like an obvious goal that most screenwriters would easily achieve, but too often they miss it. They worry so much about the audience understanding their characters that they find a way to build in really blunt and uninspired character development that often manifests as characters just saying things about one another. "John is smart." "Helen is brave." "Del is punctual." His Girl Friday is full of examples of character development that's slipped into normal conversations, giving the audience an impression of sincerity. In this exchange, the main characters reminisce about their honeymoon:

Hildy: All I know is that instead of two weeks in Atlantic City with my bridegroom, I spent two weeks in a coal mine with John Krupsky. You don't deny that, do you Walter?
Walter: Deny it? I'm proud of it. We beat the whole country on that story.
Hildy: Well, I suppose we did. That isn't what I got married for!

     From this short exchange, we better understand each of their priorities in general and the history of their relationship with each other. It's lines like this that make their future behaviour unsurprising. Big hand for Charles Lederer, everyone!

Look at this freaking lobby card :')

     Remember when I said we'd talk about Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell later? Well later is now.  These two as Hildy and Walter have Sam and Diane level chemistry. He's pants-shreddingly handsome. She's got a big sexy brain. They shamelessly flirt their way through the movie (and our hearts). They aren't just very compatible pieces of meat though. The characters also have a remarkably complex relationship for a movie from 1940. They have that conflict friction that audiences love. While they fight bitterly and throw nuclear grade barbs back and forth, they have a mutual love and respect that stops them from ever really crossing a line. It's that mutual respect that's specifically so surprising. The fact that Hildy is able to walk through this movie as a professional divorcee and is still every one's favourite person is truly remarkable. I'm not exaggerating, either. Every person that Hildy runs into is overjoyed to see her. You'd think she shat money or cigarettes or something. The reassuring feature of this enthusiasm for her is that most of it is related to her talent. People acknowledge and respect her for journalistic ability. She's not lauded for her body or her relationship to her ex-husband, but for her big sexy brain. Hey 40's? The future called. They want their female character back. Anyway. The relationship between Hildy and Walter is beautifully crafted and executed, and honestly, it's a joy to watch unfold. Plus, both Grant and Russell have outrageous Mid-Atlantic accents, so they sound bonkers.



     His Girl Friday is a very nice intro to classic cinema if you aren't already familiar and a nice edition to your repertoire if you are. It's light, funny and only mildly sexist. Also, part of the reason Hildy Johnson is such a cool cat is that she's based on a real fucking person!! Her name was Adela Rogers St. Johns and she was hailed as "The World's Greatest Girl Reporter" during the 20's and 30's. Hildy's costumes are a widely acknowledged highlight of this film, and they are based on this woman's actual outfits. That's how compelling she was. Please do yourself a great service and read that wiki page. Ms. Rogers St. Johns was a god damn treasure and a fascinating woman. But yeah great movie also. Check em' both out!


***


Well. That's that. I've been meaning to mention that I'll take requests! If there's something you'd love to know my thoughts on, please let me know! I'll probably do it! Anyway, let's talk more about that jackass in my high school film class. If memory serves, the kid was making his outrageous qualification in reference to Modern Times, the 1936 Charlie Chaplin classic that is arguably one of his best and most iconic works. As a mixture of confusion and offence settled into my still processing brain, I realized that it had never even occurred to me that someone might not like a movie because of the colour it was shot in. It brought me out of the safe bubble I'd spent the majority of my childhood consuming art in, with a father and mother that not only encouraged critical examination of said art, but often required it. This statement helped me realize that not everyone was encouraged like I was. This kid, like so many others, was reacting negatively to something unfamiliar in the film. It probably wasn't the fact of the black and white colour scheme that offended him, but rather that he'd never been empowered to embrace art that looked different from what he was used to. If Modern Times had been in colour, I bet he would have liked it. Heck, if he'd been 14 in 1936, he probably would have liked it! His lizard brain, designed to keep him physically and emotionally safe, would have said "My guy, this is fine! We've seen this before. Just enjoy it." This kid, through no fault or intention of his own, set me on my path to not only trying to understand why individual artists make the choices they do, but why the public makes the choices they do when they consume and judge that art. I find the psychology behind film making and film reception fascinating. Thanks, Timmy.

See you next week!