His Girl Friday 1940 Review

This is the definitive, best version of THE FRONT PAGE featuring some of the fastiest, wittiest and snappiest verbal repertoire (it's damn near like Beat era poetry) you'll ever laugh at.

Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy and a great supporting cast all shine.  Often when this movie is on television or if you see it on DVD in bargain bins, it's represented by a terrible presentation that has bad picture and sound and distracts from the film.  

Director Howard Hawks encouraged the changing of the sex of one of the reporters from the play (instead of two rival male reporters, one becomes a female, an ex-wife of the other) in the play, creating one of the best and most successfuol screwball comedies every made in the process.

 A new level is added to the play because of Rosalind Russell and the backstory, which means  Cary Grant gets to be jealous as well as competitive and ambitious with his reporter rival.  Hawks juggles the incredible fast pace, fast dialogue and keeps the socially aware message of the play, the attack on corrupt city hall and all the rest of it amidst the plot and stream of dialogue that will have you rolling on the floor in the laughter. 

Again it is  important you pick up the restored  DVD version because the public domain versions contain bad prints and the sound is bad on most of the ones I've seen.   It's worth owning because you'll enjoy watching it many many times and be delighted and laugh out loud constantly as you watch.  Trust me on this....

It's number 14 on my Great Movies of all time list.

His Girl Friday   1940    directed by  Howard Hawks