Unrated, 1 hr. 32 minutes.
Directed by Howard Hawks. Release
Date: Jan 18, 1940. DVD Release
Date: Dec 28, 2004.
This is one of only about twenty of the movies recommended
by my readers for my 100 Classic Movies project that I knew absolutely nothing
about. So, unlike so many of the other
movies, I went in to His Girl Friday
with absolutely no expectations. I came
out trying to decide where I sat on the issue of the movie, and it took me a
little more than a day to come to grips with my own internal dialogue. What I’ve learned is that this is a situation
where my head and gut were moderately at odds.
It wasn’t until I
paid a little more attention to what was going on that I realized a few
things. The first was that the movie is
intended to be a comedy, and the second was something a little more off the
beaten path: the actors were stepping
all over each others’ lines. A little
internet research proved this to be a first in the movie industry, but I’m not
sure it’s something I’m totally down with.
At first the chaotic recitation of lines was a distraction, and on
occasion, it made it hard for me to understand anyone. Add to it that the actors are speed racing
through their lines, and I struggled to get much of the dialogue. That being said, I did think that the actors
were outstanding, and I’m impressed to think how much of this HAD to be ad
lib. Cary Grant seems to have ad libbed most of his dialogue, and there are times when it seems like Rosalind Russell
must have been in direct competition with him.
They made for an interesting, but not terribly alluring, leading
couple. I didn’t like them together the
way I’ve liked each of them in other romantic roles.
It was a long time before I realized that people might find
the movie funny, but once I caught on to that, I began to pay much closer
attention to the movie, and particularly everything that was going on in the
swell of chaos that is the passage of the tale. Some of the dialogue, particularly the stuff
being said when the camera isn’t focused on the actor speaking, is
hysterical. I know from my research that
references to the character Bruce Baldwin looking like “that famous actor…
Ralph Bellamy” were ad libbed, but I also know I hate that. Listen to me rant about Ocean’s Twelve some time and see how I feel about characters
discussing their resemblances to their real world selves.
I guess it’s safe to say that I had mixed reactions to just
about everything. I understand why
people think this is a great comedy, but I think it isn’t my style… for a “screwball” comedy, it seems a bit
tame, although it’s possible that my exposure to 80s screwball comedies are at
fault for that. The scenes that include
more outlandish behavior certainly fit with my concept of the screwball, but
there are a lot of very… decorous scenes where you have to pay sharp attention
to the dialogue to get anything silly or off-beat. If I hadn’t watched other comedies from the
same era, I might not have even noticed how far off the standard accepted
comedic behavior some of what we see here is.
