His Girl Friday (Movie Review): Classic Comedy Still Enjoyable Today
With its incredibly fast-paced and witty dialogue, and excellent performances from stars Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant, His Girl Friday is a screwball comedy from the Golden Age of Hollywood that can still be enjoyed today.
The film centers around star reporter Hildy Johnson (Russell). Hildy has just returned from time abroad and tells her newspaper’s editor, Walter Burns (Grant), who’s also her ex-husband, that she’s quitting the newspaper business and moving to Albany with plans to settle down and marry her new love interest, a mild-mannered insurance salesman named Bruce. Walter will go to any length to keep Hildy from quitting and desperately wants to both win her back and keep her in the newspaper game.
Part of Walter’s plan involves getting Hildy to report on the current big case, the upcoming execution of a convicted murderer. His Girl Friday is based on The Front Page, a Broadway play first produced in 1928. The play focused exclusively on the newspapermen reporting on the case in question, with His Girl Friday changing the lead reporter from male to female and shifting the focus of the story to a love triangle between Hildy, Walter, and Bruce.
His Girl Friday is definitely at its strongest when it’s focusing on the relationships between these three characters, with the parts about the convict and the goings on of the pressroom in the courthouse being the least interesting. The characters themselves definitely capture our attention more than the actual story that they find themselves in.
The film also serves as a look at how things were very, very different in America over 80 years ago. Sometimes an older film can be both entertaining (in the manner it was originally intended when it was first released) and interesting in the modern world as a glimpse into the nation’s past. That’s definitely the case here. At some points in His Girl Friday, I found myself comparing what I was rooting for to happen with what I think people when the movie first came out would have been rooting for, and I think the ending of this film if it had been made today would be quite different.
Overall, there’s a lot to like about His Girl Friday, and I’d recommend it if you’re looking for a classic romantic comedy with snappy dialogue.
Grade: 7/10