Tuesday, April 14, 2015

His Girl Friday

Directed by: Howard Hawks

Written by: Charles Lederer, Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, and Morrie Ryskind









I'll try to keep my review here brief. For years, I'd had this movie on my radar for a long time, mainly due to the presence of Cary Grant, but had never gotten around to sitting and watching it.

As the script was based on a play, most of the film focuses on the dialogue between characters to develop the plot, with few moments of action and few changes of scene. Without this information up front, I struggled with the film's pace while I was watching it. It's a little long, and some scenes felt unnecessarily long.

That being said, the movie is quite enjoyable. The quick dialogue between Grant and Russell is top-of-the-line. The movie possesses an excellent balance of comedy (usually in the form of irony) and simple action/drama to keep things moving forward.

I didn't really know what I was getting into with this film, but I'm glad I finally got around to seeing it.