Hildy Johnson is an ace reporter who has decided to throw in the sleazy newspaper game for a decent life. But when she comes to break the news to Walter Burns, her boss and ex-husband, he manages to drag her back into a fast-breaking story.
If you like fast dialogue, this is the movie for you. The actors speak so fast you'll wonder if it's physiologically possible to do so. Based on Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's hit play The Front Page, it's an incredibly cynical but extremely funny story. Nobody is very interested in Williams the killer or the details of his crime, only in its context as relates to them. The reporters want a scoop, the Mayor and Chief want the black vote, the Governor wants to be popular, the girlfriend wants to be noticed, Hildy wants the rush from beating out everyone else. From my viewpoint it's a stinging indictment of newshounds (and as relevant as ever today) but Hawks was a pragmatist and he plays it as a nutty comedy as everyone scrambles over everyone else fishing for the best angle. Screwball comedies of sexual dynamics and goofy situations were big in the late thirties and early forties, with films like It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby or The Philadelphia Story, and stars like Grant, Katharine Hepburn and Carole Lombard made their reputations with them. If they have one major attraction, it's the leading ladies' potential to let rip and Russell does not disappoint, with a fantastic ear-chewing swaggering tour-de-force performance as she out-shouts and out-mugs a very funny Grant, a sort of acting equivalent of a headbanging hard rock guitar solo. Bellamy, as the hopelessly out-of-his-depth nice guy, heads a great support cast full of nutjobs (such as Billy Gilbert as the doofus delivering the pardon), all of whom are obviously having a whale of a time. And for me that's kind of the problem with this movie - they had so much of a blast making it, they didn't think what if the audience doesn't understand the plot and can't hear half the cracks. It's hilarious, but like Burns it's also so full of itself it doesn't know when to quit. Rhythm is key in movies and while ninety-miles-an-hour from start to finish is fun, for me it doesn't quite work. It's an unmissable classic though, if only to see Russell go at it and hear screenwriter Charles Lederer's crazy dialogue. There are several other film versions of this plot, notably the 1974 Billy Wilder straight adaptation of the play (in which the Hildy character is male), but this is the best and one of the sassiest comedies of its era.
If you like fast dialogue, this is the movie for you. The actors speak so fast you'll wonder if it's physiologically possible to do so. Based on Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's hit play The Front Page, it's an incredibly cynical but extremely funny story. Nobody is very interested in Williams the killer or the details of his crime, only in its context as relates to them. The reporters want a scoop, the Mayor and Chief want the black vote, the Governor wants to be popular, the girlfriend wants to be noticed, Hildy wants the rush from beating out everyone else. From my viewpoint it's a stinging indictment of newshounds (and as relevant as ever today) but Hawks was a pragmatist and he plays it as a nutty comedy as everyone scrambles over everyone else fishing for the best angle. Screwball comedies of sexual dynamics and goofy situations were big in the late thirties and early forties, with films like It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby or The Philadelphia Story, and stars like Grant, Katharine Hepburn and Carole Lombard made their reputations with them. If they have one major attraction, it's the leading ladies' potential to let rip and Russell does not disappoint, with a fantastic ear-chewing swaggering tour-de-force performance as she out-shouts and out-mugs a very funny Grant, a sort of acting equivalent of a headbanging hard rock guitar solo. Bellamy, as the hopelessly out-of-his-depth nice guy, heads a great support cast full of nutjobs (such as Billy Gilbert as the doofus delivering the pardon), all of whom are obviously having a whale of a time. And for me that's kind of the problem with this movie - they had so much of a blast making it, they didn't think what if the audience doesn't understand the plot and can't hear half the cracks. It's hilarious, but like Burns it's also so full of itself it doesn't know when to quit. Rhythm is key in movies and while ninety-miles-an-hour from start to finish is fun, for me it doesn't quite work. It's an unmissable classic though, if only to see Russell go at it and hear screenwriter Charles Lederer's crazy dialogue. There are several other film versions of this plot, notably the 1974 Billy Wilder straight adaptation of the play (in which the Hildy character is male), but this is the best and one of the sassiest comedies of its era.