His Girl Friday (1940)
- Directed by
- Howard Hawks
- Genre
- drama film, comedy drama, comedy of remarriage, romantic comedy film
- Country
- United States
- Runtime
- 1h 30m
- Rated
- NR
- Rating
- 7.4 of 10 from 949 voters
- Elsewhere
- IMDb
The catalogue in 3D
The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.
How it feels
A newspaper editor tries to win back his ex-wife and star reporter by tricking her into covering one last story. They both get caught up in a murder case while he schemes to break up her new engagement.
wittyfast-pacedplayfulsharply funnybuoyantcerebralenergeticromantic
What happens
His Girl Friday is a 1940 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell and featuring Ralph Bellamy and Gene Lockhart. It was released by Columbia Pictures. The plot centers on a newspaper editor named Walter Burns who is about to lose his ace reporter and ex-wife, Hildy Johnson, newly engaged to another man. Burns suggests they cover one more story together, getting themselves entangled in the case of murderer Earl Williams as Burns desperately tries to win back his wife. The screenplay was adapted from the 1928 play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. This was the second time the play had been adapted for the screen, the first occasion being the 1931 film which kept the original title The Front Page. The script for His Girl Friday was written by Charles Lederer, with the biggest alteration to the source material being the change of Hildy Johnson's gender, an idea introduced by Hawks. Filming began in September 1939 and finished in November, seven days behind schedule. Production was delayed because the frequent improvisation and numerous ensemble scenes required many retakes. Hawks encouraged his actors to be aggressive and spontaneous. His Girl Friday has been noted for its surprises, comedy, and rapid, overlapping dialogue. Hawks was determined to break the record for the fastest film dialogue, at the time held by The Front Page. He used a sound mixer on the set to increase the speed of dialogue and held a showing of the two films next to each other to prove how fast his film was. His Girl Friday was No. 19 on American Film Institute's 100 Years ... 100 Laughs and was selected in 1993 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film is in the public domain because the copyright was not renewed; the play it was based on remained under copyright for several decades until it expired in 2024, fully releasing the film from remaining copyright. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)
More like this
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
My Favorite Wife (1940)
Too Many Husbands (1940)
The Lady Eve (1941)
You Can't Fool Your Wife (1940)
Always a Bride (1940)
Ladies Must Live (1940)
Design for Scandal (1941)- More like this film, on a shelf you can walk up to.It's the lit case on the top shelf.