HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940)

Walter Burns, editor of a major Chicago newspaper, is about to lose his ace reporter and former wife, Hildy Johnson, to insurance salesman Bruce Baldwin, but not without a fight! The crafty editor uses every trick in his fedora to get Hildy to write one last big story, about murderer Earl Williams and the inept Sheriff Hartwell. The comedy snowballs as William's friend, Molly Malloy, the crooked Mayor, and Bruce's mother all get tied up in Walter's web.
--Written by Steve Fenwick {scf@w0x0f.com}

User Comments: "What a gem!", 31 August 2003
Author: banjoboy from Lund, Sweden

I just finished watching the DVD of this first-class, semi-Screwball comedy in Columbia Classics beautiful transfer, and it absolutely made my day! What a movie! What a screenplay! The dialogue is better - more modern - in fact, than a in lot of contemporary movies. It's incredibly funny, too, and my teenage sons kept laughing right along with me at the smart come-backs. Cary Grant is, of course, as good (if not better) than ever, and I've never seen Rosalind Russel in a role that suited her more perfectly. And that's just for starters: The timing of the thing is still awe- inspiring after sixty-odd years; the supporting actors, down to the bit-players, are all memorable, convincing and hilarious; the camera work (this IS the forties, though) is inventive and the editing superb. I can safely confess now that I hadn't ever seen it before, but that's no reason for you to make the same mistake: Go buy/rent it NOW! Hats off to the great Howard Hawks, his cast and crew for pulling this comedy masterpiece off.

 



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