His Girl Friday (1940)

United States, 1940
Cast: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russel, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart
Director: Howard Hawks
My Rating: ** 1/2 / ****

Turn on your time-machine, and let’s go back in time. To a world where a raging war that took live of millions was just a nightmare yet to come and not a bloody-ink on a book of history.

It’s 1940 where this film was one of the first, if not the first film that features character’s dialog overlapping each-other and not just taking turns as it used to be. With a script that could easily made a three-hour long film, this film delivers its kicks, its wits, and its non-stop comedy in a rapid-fire. One of the most important film in American history that even one could easily argue that someone cannot learn about American film history without including this film in its syllabus.

Based on a play about live as a newspaper reporter, the trio main-cast on this movie were involved in a some kind of a bizarre love triangle. Hildy was a known reporter for her brilliance, but has recently quit her job as she tries to become a less obsessive person and become more like a commoner. Her editor, Walter Burns – also her ex-husband – doesn’t want her to quit, of course (or for that matters, doesn’t want her to divorced him, either). So when on one day, she went to the “Morning Post” where she had her reputation built nicely around her to meet Walter, he doesn’t waste a time to lure her back into his office, and his home. But, it was only to find that she brought a news in which he doesn’t like nor he has been prepared for. She was getting married with someone else with less enthusiastic in life (read: led a boring life). And so, for the rest of the film we see him trying desperately to win her back. Both her heart, and her old-enthusiastics on Journalism, in a roller-coaster joy ride of hillarious comedy ever made by Hollywood delivered – as I had stated earlier – in a rapid dialog show-down. I had to focus rather hard to catch the dialog, often rewind to had a better understanding since I watched it without subtitles.

The movie wasn’t that great, I’ve seen better (well, of course since it’s an 1940 movie with black and white pictures, and monotonous sound), it manages to hook me right after Hildy and Walter walks out of Walter’s office to greet Bruce, soon-to-be Hildy’s husband. With dialogues that slapping one another, providing a sense of irony as well as sarcasm, the movie was able to keep the pace up until which I think is the best scene in a movie where Hildy, who has finally found and obey her true instinct, Journalism, doing as frantic as an addict could be to type the story she had covered, while Walter as an editor, instructs his employees to change the headlines of tomorrow’s editon, while Bruce was desperately trying to persuade Hildy to go with him. *SPOILER* This three-way monolog was created beautifully, that even if you had sympathy with Bruce, we knew right from the start of the News Room scene that Hildy cannot turns her back from her life-calling which is Journalism, you would simply be smiling. Especially when Hildy made a ‘stupid’ remarks before the end of that scene, “Where’s Bruce? I thought I heard him a while ago?”. This ‘stupid’ remarks made me laugh heartily, a thing that after so many movies had become a rarity.

Though I didn’t understand some of the dialogs delivered, further, the movie also incorporates several “in-jokes” which make things went even deeper into the haze. But, I’ve got more fun by merely seeing the gestures made by the characters, or most importantly the chemistry between Hildy and Walter. Now, that’s what I call chemistry. It was hillarious, romantic, and warm. I felt so envious to them, and that’s the proof of how effective this duo turns out to be. And if you were watching movies, it was appropriate that you at least enjoy the movie. Not necessarily understand, which I think is secondary (well, that’s why after a while, I re-watch a particular movie), but enjoyment is the first and the foremost important things when it comes to movies. And that’s what I had.

PS: This film has become a public property. You could easily downloaded it, copy it, even alter it without violating any copyrights out there. See Archive.org for more info.