His Girl Friday - 1048

Amazon.com The Front Page, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's classic 1928 newspaper play, has had three official film versions and contributed structural DNA to half the movies ever made about professional camaraderie and fierce love-hate friendships. Lewis Milestone's 1931 movie is well respected (Billy Wilder's 1974 version isn't), but this is one case where the remake towers brilliantined head and blocked shoulders above the original. Howard Hawks had the inspired notion of making Hildy Johnson--the ace newsman whom demonic editor Walter Burns is trying to keep from quitting and getting married--a she instead of a he. What's more, she's not only Walter's star reporter but also his ex-wife. When Hildy (Rosalind Russell) comes to tell Walter (Cary Grant) she's leaving the newspaper business, he bamboozles her into carrying out one last assignment--a death-row interview with a little nebbish (John Qualen) convicted of killing a policeman. It sounds like a snap, but before you can say screwball comedy, the press room of the Criminal Courts Building has become ground zero for all the lunacy a jailbreak, a shooting, an impromptu suicide, a corrupt city administration, and the most Machiavellian "hero" in the American cinema can supply. His Girl Friday is one of the, oh, five greatest dialogue comedies ever made; Hawks had his cast play it at breakneck speed, and audiences hyperventilate trying to finish with one laugh so they can do justice to the four that have accumulated in the meantime. Russell, not Hawks's first choice to play Hildy, is triumphant in the part, holding her own as "one of the guys" and creating an enduring feminist icon. Grant is a force of nature, giving a performance of such concentrated frenzy and diamond brilliance that you owe it to yourself to devote at least one viewing of the movie to watching him alone. But then you have to go back (lucky you) and watch it again for the sake of the press-room gang--Roscoe Karns, Porter Hall, Cliff Edwards, Regis Toomey, Frank Jenks, and others--the kind of ensemble work that gets character actors onto Parnassus. --Richard T. Jameson Product Description A classic screwball comedy in which Russell plays reporter Hildy Johnson, who, on the eve of her remarriage, is talked into one more assignment by her editor and ex-husband, Grant. While interviewinga condemned man, Hildy realizes that his hanging is planned as a vote-getting measure. Spontaneously, she helps the man escape. Set Contains: The best thing about this Columbia Classics DVD is the cleaned-up print, which makes the rich black-and-white cinematography as crisp as the banter. The other extras are well worth it for fans, including respectable short documentaries on Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Howard Hawks, and the journey of The Front Page from Broadway through its film incarnations. The true highlight, though, is the commentary by Variety film critic Todd McCarthy, author of Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood, who unobtrusively gives a fan's and a critic's appreciation of the film's dialogue, the chemistry between its stars, and how Hawks set up certain shots to optimum effect. Not to be missed.
ASIN: 6305416192
VSKU: GGV.6305416192.G
Condition: Good
Binding: DVD