Review of His Girl Friday (1940) by Anastasia B — 01 Nov 2009

This film is an absolute triumph for everyone involved in the production. Even by today's rapid standards the dialogue snaps too fast for you to notice every joke. Based on an amazing play by Ben Hecht, Howard Hawks directs an insurmountable adaptation that's a comedy of substance, style, and performing perfection, all at the same time. Cary Grant and Rossalind Russell make sure of it.

It would take forever to mention every secondary character ... and their characteristic comic contribution to the film. It's a bunch of fast-talking, fast-thinking rogue journalists that would have sold their mothers to the zoo if they were certain that they would get a few good laughs out of it. In juxtaposition to all these suspicious types, stands Ralph Bellamy, as the naive "prince", Bruce Baldwin, who promises to take Rosalind Russell's Hildy Johnson away to his lovely and quiet "castle", promising a life of splendid, yet life-ending (read: boring as hell) domesticity. It's not a wonder that Hildy will do anything to get "that last story" written up, on the way falling accidentally on the lap of Cary Grant's irresistible Walter Burns...