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Critics Consensus: Anchored by stellar performances from Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, His Girl Friday is a classic screwball romantic comedy.
Critic Consensus: Anchored by stellar performances from Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, His Girl Friday is a classic screwball romantic comedy.
All Critics (47) | Top Critics (5) | Fresh (46) | Rotten (1) | DVD (10)
The movie bears reviewing because there's always something new in the confetti of one-liners, while its depiction of the Fourth Estate remains relevant.
Cary Grant's performance is truly virtuoso -- stunning technique applied to the most challenging material.
Casting is excellent, with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in the top roles.
Perhaps the funniest, certainly the fastest talkie comedy ever made.
It takes you by the scruff of the neck in the first reel and it shakes you madly, bellowing hoarsely the. while, for the remaining six or seven. Before it's over you don't know whether you have been laughing or having your ears boxed.
Characters step on each other's lines in the speedy exchanges of weaponized words, and the humor of the banter and their delivery haven't lost their punch in nearly 80 years.
Howard Hawks returned to the material and added a twist that made it all his own: he transformed the love-hate buddy comedy of dirty tricks into a delicious battle of the sexes.
Hawks conducts the intrigue at such a frantic lick - achieving speed by means of overlapping dialogue and manoeuvring the actors within the frame rather than by quick cutting - that we are willingly swept along.
'His Girl Friday' is more feminist than it even gets credit for.
By switching the main character's gender and adding romantic sparks, Hawks turned the masterful, raucous Chicago newsroom farce The Front Page into the perfect screwball comedy.
Delivering a parity of belly laughs and social commentary, His Girl Friday is satire of the highest order.
one of the fastest, funniest, and most honestly brutal comedies of the classical Hollywood era
Rosalind Russell thinks she wants out of the reporting racket, wants a "normal" life, but her ex-husband (Cary Grant as the editor of a big city newspaper) has other ideas. Beautifully brilliant and warmly charming, this one earns its bragging rights as one of the classics as a comic look at the shady game of public manipulation.
Super Reviewer
I guess the term "screwball" couldn't be more well illustrated than by this laugh-out-loud comedy whose characters shoot their overlapping lines in an insanely frenetic rhythm, with Grant and Russell simply hilarious and displaying an enormous chemistry together.
Was told it's a classic...and, yeah, I guess I can see why. However, I do think this one is quite overrated. Or maybe I'm just not a massive fan of screwball comedies? Who knows? I did like this though, but I don't think it's a full on masterpiece or anything. Directed by the diverse Howard Hawks, this is a rapid-fire comedy about a feisty newspaper reporter who wants to leave her job to get married. Her boss, and ex-lover however, wants her back, and, to do so, he baits her with a news story she just can't resist. And plot wise, that's pretty much it. In the original play, the lady was a man, so, by changing the gender, the film adds elements of sexual tension, gender politics, and that kind of subtext, which, yeah, I'll give it a lot of credit for that, especially since this film is 73 years old. I think that's the key thing here. This was a seminal film, but it's not quite as groundbreaking as it once was. It doesn't have the edge it used to, but I can still admire it for it being so potent at one time. What really holds up though is the rapid fire dialogue. Now I really know where the Coens got their inspiration for fast talking characters, and where Altman was perhaps inspired in the overlapping dialogue department. And The Social Network. That one had some lightning quick lines, but this one might be the king of all that. And it is really good writing, too. This is a pretty witty and funny film, but modern audiences unfortunately may not get super into it if they're used to blue humor. It's quite clean here, though there is that undercurrent of sexual tension and subtlety. The broad basic plot is kinda ho hum (I thought), but still enjoyable, if only for the sharp characters, and the even sharper performances. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell are great here, and they seem to have a blast going toe to toe with one another. Besides the snappy dialogue, the film is also known for it's editing, and yeah, it's some pretty snazzy, influential stuff. The film is well shot, and put together in an even better fashion. So, bottom line: it's a classic, sure, but an overrated one. I dug it, but can say that I would have loved this even more if I was a bigger fan of this kind of thing, and especially had I seen this maybe a few years ago.
Snappy dialogue and a quick-witted script highlight this film from 1940. Based on a play called "The Front Page", director Howard Hawks' "His Girl Friday" takes a comedically serious look at the sleezy world of yellow journalism. Star reporter Hildy (Rosalind Russell) is quitting the newspaper business to go lead a respectable life as the wife of insurance salesman Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy). However, her former boss (and ex-husband) Walter would rather she forget all this respectability business and come back to work for him (and also marry him again). The story he hopes will bring her back is the execution of cop murderer Earl Williams (John Qualen). Walter is fighting to get a pardon for Williams, who killed a "colored" cop and the mayor is only trying to get him executed because of the election coming up (because the colored vote is very strong in that town). Apparently, Williams was driven "crazy" because of all the hard times poor people must face, and when a gun was placed in his hand, he was compelled to use it. I guess all this is logical by 1930s standards, but many of these plot details had me cringing. There's a strange amoral morality at work with these characters. They do horrible things to innocent people to get what they want, but I suppose since they're the heroes of the film, we're supposed to root for them. The story is good however, I wonder if it might've been a better drama than screwball comedy.
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