By Howard Hawks, 1940.
Starring Ralph Bellamy, Cary Grant, Helen Mack, John Qualen, Rosalind Russell.
Rating: 10/10, 8/10.
It wasn’t until the late 50s, early 60s that people started to really pay any attention to the director of movies. I mean, sure, Orson Welles kind of started it in 1941 with Citizen Kane, but the concept didn’t really click until much later. Nowadays we recognize a bunch of those early directors and Howard Hawks damn well better be one of them. There’s The Big Sleep, Bringing Up Baby, and His Girl Friday, just to name three of his movies.
I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Bringing Up Baby, so I can’t say that I like His Girl Friday more, but if I’m honest I have to say that it is better. Where Bringing Up Baby was so preposterously odd and funny that there wasn’t a slow moment, or time for seriousness for even a second, His Girl Friday has more range. It is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen, yes, but it gives itself time for serious scenes and issues—failed relationships, politics, the death penalty, the role of women in society—and does a superb job of covering them all. True, the superfluous ending kind of compromises that last one, but I view that as a necessary evil in films of this era, and move on.
As usual with comedies, I don’t really have much to say about it. It’s hilarious, it’s intelligent, it’s brilliantly written, directed, and acted. That’s enough, really, isn’t it? I just want to alert you (yes, you, because you are going to see it, if you haven’t yet) to one scene where the brilliant writing, direction, and acting come together in perhaps the most perfect fusion of the three that I have ever seen. There is a scene where Cary Grant is trying to convince Rosalind Russell of something (I don’t recall what, I saw it a while ago) and he is being the overbearing man that he is, leaning over her and talking at her as almost an attack. He advances on her, and she retreats—not out of weakness, but out of a refusal to allow him to intimidate her (or so her physical acting has me think). They move in this way in circles around the table, all the while arguing their cases. Everything here is perfect. I felt like applauding when that scene ended.