#22 - His Girl Friday (1940, Howard Hawks)

The fastest-talkingest of all fast-talking comedies, His Girl Friday crams what must be a 200-page script into a 90 minute movie. The pace of the film, not just the dialogue but the blocking and editing, is so quick I must've drank about six cups of coffee just to get up to the level of the characters I was watching. My initial reaction is to compare Cary Grant's Walter Burns to an auctioneer but Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) beat me to it about 10 minutes into the film.

Hildy is the ace reporter for a New York newspaper but she's living the business to get married to some schmuck in Albany. This doesn't sit well with her editor / ex-husband Walter who'll do anything to get Hildy to stay. The story he needs her for involves the impending execution of a man accused of killing a police officer and an alleged cover-up of parts of this crime. Hildy's travel plans keep getting pushed back to make room for new developments in the story, which culminates in the man escaping from prison (located conveniently next door to the newspaper office!) and hiding out in a desk in the newsroom.

I've never seen The Front Page, the play and 1931 film from which His Girl Friday was adapted but the original had the Hildy character as a man (same name, but short for Hildebrand rather than Hildegaard) whose impetus for leaving was a higher-paying job in advertising rather than settling into suburban domesticity, although I suppose that's what the advertising job leads to.

By changing the sex of the character but not the gender, girl Hildy has even less reason to leave the newspaper game. This woman does not want to be a housewife despite what she says in the first act. The balance of power between her and her fiance is fun to watch as there is no balance whatsoever. Bruce, the fiance, is a gullible mama's boy (he and Hildy are even planning on living with his mother after getting married) who constantly falls into Walter's traps. How he and cynical, streetsmart Hildy ever got together is a total mystery but it sets up a battle of the sexes where a straight woman acting like one of the guys is never belittled or ridiculed and is rewarded at the end (ok, by getting remarried to Walter but you saw that coming).

New #100: Marnie (#244)