Based off the Broadway hit The Front Page, Howard Hawks film, His Girl Friday is an example of what can be done when you have a skilled team of actors and writers. Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) starts the film off by entering The Morning Post and going to see Walter Burns (Cary Grant), who is Hildy's boss as well as ex husband. She lets him know that she is quitting as well as getting married to Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy). During the dialogue these two actors have, the audience is introduced to this films interesting style of dialogue. In order for the film to cover a "... 191-page script in a fleet ninety-two-minute running time." it had to make use of overlapping speech. This kind of speech is used throughout the film and it in a way that lets the audience understand what is going on, even when some of the words are cut off by another actors lines. To better understand this, I recommend taking a look at the video down below, which goes into more detail about the dialogue and how it was achieved. Now that we have the dialogue structure and technique out of the way, lets take a look into whats actually inside the dialogue. A big focus of this film is put on the way men and women are treated differently. Many of the females in the film are not respected as equals and sometimes even ignored. A good example of this is when Mollie Malloy, played by Helen Mack, comes into the City Hall pressroom and is ignored and disrespected by the gang of reporters. She enters the room and starts explaining what really happened with her and Williams. She says, "I never said I loved Earl and wanted to marry him on the gallows. You made that up..." Hildy goes on to lead Mollie out of the room. This treatment is the opposite for Hildy. Even though Hildy is a woman, she is treated like a man and on many occasions even called a, "Newspaperman". This is where one of the films themes comes into place. Around the time this film was made, in 1940, women were still expected to take care of the house and children. This common belief is expressed in the film, multiple times. In the beginning of the film, Hildy tells Walter that she is quitting the newspaper job and going to marry Bruce Baldwin. During this conversation she says that she wants to go somewhere where she can be a woman and have a home. This is a very important scene because as the film progresses we see that Hildy has an internal battle with herself. Even though she thinks she wants to be a normal woman and have a home, she ends up going back to the newspaper every time. Towards the end of the film we see Hildy losing her will to be a "woman" and the will to have a home. Instead her passion for the paper is so strong, that she ends up ignoring Bruce and destroying her dreams of ever getting married to him. This is foreshadowed towards the middle of the film, when the reporters in the pressroom start placing bets on how long the new marriage would last and saying things like, "I give that marriage three months."
One final thing I wanted to mention was the corruption and manipulation that was shown throughout the film. During the second half of the movie we start seeing that the Sheriff and Mayor are working together in a plot to save their own reputation and put the blame on William, by accusing him of shooting the police officer and not letting him plead insanity. This escalates to an amazing ending in which we see Hildy and Walter work as a team to try and get the real story out to the people. Down below is the final scene, where the Mayor and Sheriff get caught and are inevitable taken away. Overall, His Girl Friday is a film that can be appreciation for its overlapping speech and many deep and powerful themes, while still keeping it a lighthearted comedy.
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David MechuraThis blog is dedicated to explaining the impact the film of the week has had on the audience and film industry. Archives |