BEFORE: No direct actor linking tonight - I'm linking by theme, since both "Up Close and Personal" and this film feature a male news editor being (or having been) married to his young star reporter. That's a pretty big commonality, I think. Oh, I could suggest some lame link (Redford was in "Havana" with Richard Farnsworth, who was in "Gunga Din" with Cary Grant) but what's the point? This year I'm allowing myself to link between themes to get the order I want.
Wait, I stand corrected. Michelle Pfeiffer was also in "Amazon Women on the Moon" with Ralph Bellamy, who appears tonight. So linking is back in play, but I sort of feel like I cheated.
THE PLOT: A newspaper editor uses every trick in the book to keep his ace reporter ex-wife from remarrying.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Front Page" (Movie #1,254)
AFTER: This is a remake of "The Front Page", the 1931 film that is. What I watched before was the 1974 remake of "The Front Page", so why watch this remake, with the same story? Well, this one was directed by Howard Hawks and appears on the list of "1,001 Films You Should See Before You Die", and neither version of the story titled "The Front Page" is on that list. So I need to see what it is about THIS version that makes it better than the others.
Essentially, the story is the same - an editor sends his star reporter (who's about to get married) to cover the story of a killer who's due to be executed, and confusion and hilarity ensue. What's weird is that here the reporter is a woman, and in the 1974 remake, the reporter is played by Jack Lemmon. I thought it was a little weird that a man would be named "Hildy", so in a way this makes more sense. (It also adds a new twist to the relationship between Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau - were their characters closer than co-workers?)
The biggest problem I have with this film - and I realize this may result from being a staged play before being a film - is that it totally violates the rule about "Show, don't tell". About 99% of the main action takes place off-screen, and we only learn about it when the reporters are calling in the story. Because apparently nothing is as exciting as seeing people run across the room to pick up a phone. This also makes this film very screamy, as everyone is yelling instructions and headlines to each other over the phone.
It's also a prime example of screwball comedy, with lots of slamming doors and running around. Oh, and somebody jumps out of a window, but I don't think that was supposed to be funny. Screwball comedies are also known for people talking really fast, like Katherine Hepburn tended to do. I think they were trying to pack a lot of punchy dialogue into a film, but they now look like they were filmed at the wrong speed, like the old footage of Babe Ruth running around the bases, when at his size he was probably more of a lumberer. (There's a reason he hit so many home runs - that fat tub would never, ever have beaten the throw to first base.)
My other theory is that people in the 1930's didn't live as long as we do today, generally speaking, so people had to talk really fast just so they could say everything they needed to say before they died, but that's just a theory, I wasn't there.
I did study some of the screwball comedies back in film school, like "Christmas in July" and "Miracle of Morgan's Creek", and I think I've determined where screwball genre fits into the history of comedy, which goes a little something like this: (all conversations imagined by me)
Comedy, circa 1600's:
Audience: "Well met, Will Shakespeare! Is thine new play a comedy, or a tragedy?"
Shakespeare: "Tis a comedy, for no one dieth in it."
Audience: "Huzzah! Twill surely be a fine comedy, for thou hast defined the genre, and we are but simpletons."
Comedy, circa 1930's:
Audience: "Hey, mac, is this talking picture show a comedy?"
Hollywood: "Sure, buddy, because there's lots of shouting and people slapping each other."
Audience: "How is that a comedy?"
Hollywood: "Because they do it very quickly!"
Audience: "OK, since it's the Depression I guess this is as good as it gets..."
Comedy, circa 2000's:
Audience: "Hey, is this film funny?"
Hollywood: "Why, sure it is! Katherine Heigl can't find a man to marry her, and Owen Wilson won't stop living on somebody's couch! And this fake reviewer said it's hilarious!"
Audience: "Hey, this isn't funny. You suck, Hollywood."
I'm leaving out a lot, of course. Monty Python killed it in the 1970's, and then Ferris Bueller danced in front of a parade in the 1980's, and there was "Airplane" and "This is Spinal Tap" and "Anchorman", but you get the idea. Mel Brooks, "Naked Gun" and Steve Martin, but you do your own research. Personally, I don't see how "His Girl Friday" gets to be #67 on the top comedy films of all time. Not when "A Fish Called Wanda" only makes it to #87, that film should be in the top 10!
You can also use the different versions of this story to take a look at the evolving battle of the sexes. In the 1974 version Hildy (Jack Lemmon) ends up married, after filing the big story, he makes it to the train and love wins out. In this version, Hildy does NOT marry her fiancé, and ends up back with her boss. You know, the guy who mistreated her, divorced her, got her fiancé arrested twice, had her fiancé's mother almost killed, paid her in counterfeit money and then made her miss her wedding. So, um, congratulations? Again, things aren't looking good for romance this week.
NITPICK POINT: I still don't understand how phones worked back in the 1930's. Many times people in the press room here picked up the receiver and yelled, "Operator, get me Duffy at the Post!" which seems to suggest that there was no direct dialing available. But then just as often they would pick up the phones and just start talking - so was that a mistake, or was there some kind of always-open connection from the prison to the press room?
NITPICK POINT #2: What kind of a prison even HAS a press room? I can see a press room at a football stadium, or at City Hall, but a prison? How many executions was this state doing in a year, to justify all those desks and phones? And what is it about an execution that absolutely HAS to be reported right away? They hang the guy, and that's it, he's dead - drive over to the paper and type up the story. Would 8 newspapers each keep a guy on staff to hang out at a prison, just on the off-chance there might be an escape someday? Seems like a huge waste of money.
Also starring Cary Grant (last seen in "An Affair to Remember"), Rosalind Russell, Gene Lockhart, John Qualen, Helen Mack, Billy Gilbert.
RATING: 4 out of 10 fedoras
No comments:
Post a Comment