Certain genres just plain don’t exist anymore. R-rated action and horror movies are rare. Comedies for adults that aren’t endless gross slapstick may be more endangered. Musicals are infrequent and sometimes are Cats. Film noir and the disaster movie are likewise not overly common. But the screwball romantic comedy, where everyone talks fast and somehow falls in love despite the slapstick, that one may be well and truly dead.
As such, why not take a look at one of the best movies of that particular subgenre? Besides, Amazon Prime had His Girl Friday free for subscribers, so here we are.
Big time New York City newspaper Walter Burns (Cary Grant) can’t let a big story go, but he did let his ex-wife (and best reporter) Hildy (Rosalind Russell) go. Hildy has returned to the paper to inform Walter that she is not only leaving the paper, but she is remarrying, this time to sweet-natured, mild-manner insurance salesman Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy). Walter, however, not quite gave up on his marriage–he even continues to refer to Hildy as his wife and not his ex-wife–and while Bruce is basically dumb and harmless, Walter will do what he needs to in order to get her back.
And if that involves a big story, of a man about to be wrongfully executed for a capital crime that only Hildy’s own writing can prevent, then so much the better.
What follows is a lot of fast-talking wisecrackers running verbal rings around, oh, everybody, particularly poor harmless Bruce who keeps getting arrested because of Walter’s tricks.
Now, this is one of the epitomes of the genre, and director Howard Hawks makes sure he gets his standard formidable female lead in Russell’s Hildy, a woman who can’t exactly prevail against Grant’s Walter (it is still a movie from 1940), but she can hold her own and see through his stunts while performing some of her own. Meanwhile, poor Bruce just seems to be in over his head at all times, not realizing what’s going on as he continually needs to be bailed out of prison.
That said, this one had some issues, and one of them was the movie as I streamed it. The first half had some so-so film footage and a lot of missing audio, a second here or there. It hampered my enjoyment. Likewise, as a divorced man, I can’t say the whole “divorced couple reconciles” thing works that well. True, the very concept of Hildy, hard-charging reporter, going for a quiet dullard like Bruce is a joke in and of itself, but I’m not a fan of the idea that divorces needs to be reversed like that.
Still, it is a classic of the genre.
Grade: A-
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