My Cultural Lowlights: HIS GIRL FRIDAY

His Girl Friday (1940) is a 'classic' picture that often appears on all those lists of the greatest films of Hollywood's Golden Age. Worse, His Girl Friday is considered to be one of the greatest films of all time. I find this to be obscenely wrong on so many levels that this article is almost going to write itself.

On the face of it, His Girl Friday has everything going for it: Howard Hawks's direction, 1928's play as its source material, intriguing subject matter, Cary Grant in his prime. Moreover, the film opens with a great scene that should at the very least offer some promising screwball shenanigans in the vein of The Awful Truth (which this film very much recalls, down to the part of Ralph Bellamy who once again plays a loveable ninny). Instead, His Girl Friday goes nowhere. In fact, it goes nowhere with such aplomb and nauseating conviction that it quickly becomes obnoxious.

I have never really bought into the idea that you need likeable characters to appreciate a work of art. However, when the only decent human being in the entire film (Bruce Baldwin, played by Ralph Bellamy) is the one you openly deride and humiliate, there is something seriously wrong with the whole thing. Even if, as I have mentioned previously, the film does not start badly. Hildy Johnson (played by Rosalind Russell) confronts her newspaper boss and ex-partner (Cary Grant) saying she wants to step down as a reporter and lead a quieter life with her soon-to-be husband named Bruce Baldwin. Being the ingenious son of a bitch that he is, the said boss will do everything in his power to prevent this from happening. Once again, if that sounds too much like The Awful Truth all over again, that is because the premise is basically the same. However, where The Awful Truth had heart, His Girl Friday is an empty exercise in tedious cynicism. If the film has any heart at all, it is corrupt and rotten.

Technically, His Girl Friday is impeccable. As a matter of fact, the film set the record for the amount of words spoken within a minute (or some such nonsense). This of course is commendable but what does this have to do with anything, really? Behind the pace and the technicality, the film amounts to very little. Everyone who is crooked and cruel, wins. Everyone else is a fool. If the filmmakers wanted to express the idea that the world of journalism is cynical and wild, why make it so one-dimensional? Why not show someone who at the very least tries to go against it? Also, it does not help that neither Cary Grant nor Rosalind Russell excel at their roles. But then again, perhaps, there was nothing to excel at. The characters lack any depth and you do not really care for any of them as they mostly resemble cardboard cutouts whose entire purpose is to shout a million words in a second.

The plot? Surprisingly weak and heavy-handed. The line with Earl Williams, a bookkeeper about to be persecuted, is like an afterthought that the director wanted to get rid of as quickly as possible. You almost have to wince at how carelessly they treat the episodes with him. Earl's girlfriend jumps from the window, and nobody gives a damn as to what happened to her. It is that kind of film. One that believes (or, rather, knows) that it is very clever and one that ends up shallow and perfunctory. His Girl Friday... Too careless to possess any semblance of heart and warmth. Too unfunny to be truly cynical.