Review of His Girl Friday (1940) by Ethan T — 28 Aug 2010

In this, one of the 20th century's finest screen comedies, there's not only the joy of seeing Cary Grant at his masterful, charismatic best as the scoundrel editor Walter Burns. There's also the superb thrill of seeing one of the century's great female lead roles, the hotshot fast-talking lady reporter Hildy Johnson, performed to perfection by Rosalind Russell, who manages the impressive feat of matching and even surpassing Grant's seemingly effortless wit, charm and plain steely-eyed chutzpah in the cold, cynical world of the newspaper business.

In His Girl Friday, director Howard Hawks created a masterpiece that requires multiple viewing just to appreciate the machine-gun verve of the ultra-snappy, wholly unsentimental yet humour-packed interwoven dialogue, and has left us one of the greatest depictions of the two-faced, shameless and exhilarating world of journalism that's ever been filmed.