Looney Toons Personified

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His Girl Friday (1940)
Dir. Howard Hawks
Written by Charles Lederer adapted from a play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
Starring: Rosalind Russell, Carey Grant, Ralph Bellamy

*Note—dialogue is all shared, every person is special and provides something to the overall wonderfulness of the movie, it is definitely an ensemble cast.

I have watched this film many times: when I was a child my parent’s played the VHS rented from the Library every so often, when I was older when they would show it on Turner Classic Movies, and now as an adult as because it never gets old. I’ve watched it about ten times now and written about it already for this blog. I thought I would have another go and focus on how they use language in the film.

One day I a month ago I put it on and then I laid down—bad idea as I was falling asleep a few moments later I had a brief thought that I would somehow absorb and be able to understand the dialogue in the dream state better than I have before. Wrong, but I did come to the conclusion that no matter how much you concentrate on just the words they still manage to slip away. I was bolstered later after reading an article, Treatise on Hawks by Bosley Crowther, a New York Times movie reviewer from 1940 to 1967.

"He believes that it [dialogue] should be written almost like music, with the important words emphasized or scored and the rest of it allowed to flow off indifferently. That’s the way most people hear conversation anyhow, he thinks."

Great—how am I supposed to analyze something that for all intents and purposes is not meant to be heard as a whole? Well, all I can do is try…

Major themes and sub-themes and tropes worked out through dialogue in the film:
➢ Code switching
➢ Gender
➢ Pace
➢ Tragedy {silence}


Code switching

Opening sequence:
A lot of things happen in a relatively short amount of time. First the newsroom setting with its frenetic energy and pace is shown and then Hildy arrives by elevator with her fiancé Bruce. Below is summary, in order, of Hildy’s many different code-switching moments just in the first part of the film.

“Hiya Skinny”—newsroom boy

Telephone operators—knowing, joking

Bruce (fiancé)—soft tones

Fellow newsmen—“Hi Hildy”—earned respect from her—both in opening sequence and later in the jail newsroom bantering back and forth and joking about her hat etc.

Conversation with fellow woman, in the newsroom, gossip columnist condescending because Hildy is different she is/was one of the guys and holds a certain status as such

Walter-ex-husband, talking down, insults flying back forth, ramping up of conversations to climax, ebbs and flows and eventually crashes against the shore as tempers flare and cool alternately
o Gender: Battle of the Sexes
• wants to be spoiled by a man, Bruce “…treats her like a woman”
• “Newspaperman” because she is so good, she is allowed to be a “newspaperman” she has proved herself but by the end of the film she has backpedaled a lot
• Wants to be a “woman” AKA a Housewife after having experienced being a career woman
• one scene when she reverts to stereotypical behavior :the closing scene which has never jibbed well with me; it kind of sits there in film leaving a bad taste in you mouth in film that otherwise shows a smart, intelligent, and capable women. She begins as a “fast talking dame” and ends as a patsy, reduced to tears—effectively silenced—back in her old job tied to Walter again who continues to use her for his own purposes.
• the title actually hints at ending with the “His” attached to Girl Friday
• Pace
o * “…comedy that set the standard and style for fast talk.”
o * “…film reproduces speech at 240 words per minute, compared to the average pace of 100 to 150 words.”
o I will see how pace functions in the neo-screwball films so stayed tuned for that in other blog posts we will see if “verbal fluency” and “verbal sparring” are still important
• Moments of Silence or at least it seems silent because it quiets down but only momentarily:
• “The heroines of comedy know that silence is not a natural state but a moral and emotional one reached through speech. The heroines of comedy also know the difference between a silence pregnant with emotional or moral meaning and a silence born of or burdened by inarticulateness (DiBattista 19).”

An article I read, Making Light of Dark: Understanding the World of His Girl Friday by James Walter, lights upon the fact that the film combines elements of comedy and melodrama to create a world. The “tonal shifts” in the movie necessitates “acknowledging the film’s fictional world as a world”.
o Molly’s suicide attempt Newspapermen heckling Molly/very short time as they look down upon her broken body/out of place in this comedy Molly unlike Hildy is unable to communicate with the newsmen. They treat her differently because she cannot speak their language. Only in death or suicide does she merit their attention.
o End sequence when Hildy cries…stands out because most of the film in contrast she can hold her own with him. Walter meanwhile has constant stream of words coming out of his mouth as he cons and spins yarns out of the air and the constant click-clack of Hildy’s typewriter keys as she does what she does best but that all stops when finally becomes she becomes a stereotypical “woman” trailing behind Walter, willing to put up with him because she loves him


Closing thoughts
This film is not perfect but it is a perfect example of Screwball comedy during its heyday. Many of the themes that it deals with sub-textually are still struggled with in more modern films. Can women be smart, capable, and in love? Gender issues with regards to workplaces. Can women be funny? Many times, if modern films are any example, that answer would be no.



http://everygame.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/


*Fast-Talking Dames by Maria DiBattista