This was on TV a while back and I caught up with it last weekend. It's a 1940 screwball comedy about newspaper reporters and it's available in the public domain so I can link you to the whole film:
Cary Grant plays a scumbag editor who, as the opening title card says, will do anything short of murder to get the story. He's a real git who's quite happy to threaten women, cheat on politicians, rob and kidnap people all for the story. He's also a real charmer and very funny. Rosalind Russell — equally smart and funny — is the star journalist who's looking to get away from the business and settle down in Albany with sweet dull Ralph Bellamy. She's also his ex-wife ("I intended to be with you on our honeymoon, honest I did," says Grant). But when a story breaks she can't resist Grant pushing her back into the fray and finds that she misses her old life.
The side-story about a death row inmate is actually oddly serious. John Qualen is accused of killing a man and is sentenced to death but there's a question mark over his sanity and, since the victim was black and there are a lot of black voters in the town, there are also question marks over the motives of the politicians trying to see him executed. Then when the confused man's depressed girlfriend jumps out of a window you might think that we were watching a serious piece of drama. I guess there's some comment on the ethics of journalism too, but all that grown-up stuff is pushed swiftly aside by the tidal wave of wisecracks — many ad-libbed — from the two stars and their supporting cast.
The relationship between Grant and Russell is a little strange. He's really a terrible person and you can see why she left him. She's no happier with Bellamy, though, and over the course of the film Grant gradually worms his way back into her heart — mostly by framing Bellamy for various crimes so that he's occupied with the police. It's interesting, though, that she doesn't even consider the third option — as if to realise that both men are wrong for her would mean she dies alone. She does end up with one of them, but it's refreshingly unromantic to think that the relationship is almost certainly over a week or two at most beyond the end credits!
I can't find any hard statistics on the subject, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was the wordiest film ever made. It runs to only 92-minutes, too, so that shows just what a pace they're going at. One source clocks them at 240 words per minute, which is about double normal talking speed. I recently saw The Social Network, the Aaron Sorkin-scripted film about the founding of Facebook. It's also pretty wordy and apparently to get the script to fit a reasonable time rather than cut out sections they instead got the actors to talk faster. Whether that's true or not, it's still slow and contemplative in comparison to His Girl Friday. The dialogue is relentless, with constant jokes and humorous asides. The actors don't even wait until the other person's sentence is finished before starting their own lines. In one remarkable scene Russell, typing a story out on her typewriter, has an argument over her shoulder with Bellamy while Cary Grant barks orders over the phone about the layout of the morning edition, frequently breaking off to make jibes at the hapless fiancé. It's sheer chaos but brilliantly executed and I can only imagine how much rehearsal it needed. Some people might find it a bit too manic but I lapped it up and would recommend the film to anyone.
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Having watched The Social Network last night (Chris likes "The Social Network"), I finally got round to watching His Girl Friday today. The point you make about the relentless nature of the script is a good one. You hardly have time to keep up with the lines - it's like a machine gun.
ReplyDeleteI noticed in TSN that the Portuguese subtitles were even less accurate than usual because of the high volume of words, especially the more nuanced expressions, to translate. God knows what a subtitled version of HGF would be like - every frame would look like the title page.
I also often think about whether films set in a small number of locations would make good plays and am pleased when things like Reservoir Dogs and Twelve Angry Men get stage productions. On the face of it, HGF would be ripe for a theatrical adaptation (given that most of the action takes place in only two locations), but I think the dialogue is almost too snappy to work on stage. In the audience you'd probably struggle to follow everything at the pace it unfolds in the film without the close-ups and miked actors you have in the cinema. It's not an aspect of the medium I'd thought much about before.
Did you also think Blazing Saddles when the press guys shouted out of the window at the executioner setting up the gallows? Interesting where these references come from.
It was actually a stage play first, although it seems to be quite different from the film. For a start, the Rosalind Russell character is male which, unless they're depicting a gay relationship, must change the dynamics quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteI didn't pick up the Blazing Saddles reference. Nice catch!