Double feature
This is a two-disc Blu-ray set featuring “His Girl Friday,” Howard Hawks’ 1940 film, and “The Front Page” (1931), a film adapted from the influential Broadway hit of the same name. “His Girl Friday” is based on “The Front Page,” except that in “His Girl Friday,” the lead character, ace reporter Hildy Johnson, is transformed from her original male incarnation into a woman, played by Rosalind Russell. And her relationship with her scheming, ruthless editor is complicated by the fact that they used to be married. Now they’re divorced, and she’s about to devote herself to a life of domesticity, with a second husband, when the biggest story of her life breaks just as she’s saying goodbye.
Now the conventional wisdom on these films is that “His Girl Friday” is the superior picture, that it is, in fact, one of the great films of its era. I hold a minority opinion. I think “His Girl Friday” and “The Front Page” are both good, not great, films, but that “The Front Page” is clearly superior. It feels authentic. It doesn’t beg for laughs. The journalists waiting in the press room are portrayed as unsavory, not cuddly.
When you watch it, you feel as though you’re seeing something true and real. With “His Girl Friday,” most of the relationships have an edge of falseness, and by having the two lead characters be former spouses, the movie is forced in a direction that the story does not want to go — toward affirming the rough-and-tumble journalistic life as something noble and fulfilling. Cary Grant is amusing, but nothing about this slick young man suggests a big-city newspaper editor.
Yes, Grant and Russell are funny, and it’s possible to savor moments for their comic detail, but overall the comedy doesn’t suit the story. It feels like a shoehorn job, cramming a story into a form to which it isn’t suited. Some of the innovations that others have praised, such as the overlapping dialogue, become overdone and annoying. All this makes “His Girl Friday” feel much more old-fashioned than “The Front Page.” (I should add that I watched “His Girl Friday” first, so it’s not as though I were influenced by seeing the original before the remake.)
Anyway, it’s two good movies — but together they make one great set, because of the opportunity to see them back to back and for the special features. Look for the critical comments by film scholars David Thomson, Molly Haskell and David Bordwell, who all love “His Girl Friday” and make a strong case for it. Their arguments are fascinating, enjoyable and utterly unpersuasive. But I would hate having to argue for the prosecution against that defense team. — Mick LaSalle