Episode 39: His Girl Friday
Justin:
The lasting impression that I have of HIS GIRL FRIDAY is two-fold:
One. Those two crazy kids are getting divorced again in a month or so. That or Hildy might just kill Walter. And I very much believe that she can.
But more importantly, two. (And I say this as something not even close to a film historian and being exactly this Howard Hawks film into a Howard Hawks marathon) I don’t think that the Aaron Sorkins, or the Edgar Wrights, or maybe even the Quentin Tarantinos of the cinema world are around today without Howard Hawks and a movie like HIS GIRL FRIDAY. Even now at over 80 years old, the dialogue in this film is so damn rat-a-tat that it blew my mind. The statistic that the line delivery in this movie is nearly three times faster than the average movie is honestly mind-boggling. It kinda felt at the time like I was watching one of the SOCIAL NETWORK deliberation scenes, but for 90 minutes straight. My subtitles even had a hard time keeping up!
I say all that to say the rapid-fire dialogue in this film is clearly inspirational and it’s definitely enjoyable to take in (although admittedly at-times overwhelming). As I said during the episode, I wouldn’t call myself the biggest fan of the movie as a whole (those two workaholic assholes really do deserve each other) but what the film lacks in fancy filmmaking and creative cinematography compared to something like CITIZEN KANE (which came out the following year) it more than makes up for in that script. And if you can’t admit that, well, Walter and his now-famous GIF have two words for you:
Get out.
