"The Art of Interruption--'His Girl Friday'"

Howard Hawk’s 1940 film adaptation, His Girl Friday, is a remarkable example of gender relations in film. Its rapid fire banter between the sexes, along with its more or less equal division of male and female lead roles, and its depiction of a female lead as less of a one dimensional ‘love interest’ and more as a complex, vibrant, multi-dimensional character, all lend to the screwball comedy genre it represents. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell are Walter and Hildy, two equally conniving yet charismatic characters that are the driving force of this comedy. Hawks’ comedic vision is to create humor out of putting two fast-talkers into complicated situations and letting the audience watch them talk their way either out of a tough spot or into a good one. However, the film is not as concerned with the situations themselves as it is with the dynamics between Hildy and Walter. Hawks uses multiple methods to ensure that the focus of the film is on the relations between Hildy and Walter. The scene beginning with Walter’s introduction, in his office, as Hildy lets herself in, and ending with both leaving the office amiably after a revealing confrontation (also known as the second scene in the film) contains the DNA of Hawks’ comedic vision.
Formally, this film is a straightforward narrative with no flashbacks, twists, or provocative editing. The mise-en-scene (excluding the characters’ movement) is sufficient in creating a believable newspaper office but does not play much of a role in itself. The camera more or less stays in the same position throughout the scene, panning from space to space, and does not take any technical risks but adheres to Classical Hollywood conventions like medium shots/medium close-ups, 3-point/high-key lighting, and the continuity editing system. However, this is not because Hawks is incapable of provocative art. He chose to subdue the mise-en-scene to emphasize the importance of the dialogue and the chemistry between Hildy and Walter. Their exchanges are masterfully written and executed but they do talk quite fast. Another effort in maintaining focus on the lead subjects is the lack of non-diegetic sound. There is no soundtrack or score, only a clear reception of the fervid tête-à-tête taking place in the office and the dim din of the bustling employees in the background—which Hawks chose to include in the depth of field to realistically simulate the constant activity found at a newspapers’ headquarters. The busy background in conjunction with the rapid-fire style of dialogue and Walter and Hildy’s own constantly-in-motion mannerisms all combine to create this chaotic, oft confusing, absurd, but mostly funny atmosphere that permeates through to the end of the film. As the core of the film relies on conversation (or argument, rather), Hawks does create many eyeline matches and shot/reverse shots that flow seamlessly with the dialogue.
Previously, the ‘characters gestures’ were excluded from the purposefully lackluster mise-en-scene description because their gestures, from the obvious constant cigarette smoking to the less obvious fond eye-roll, play an important role in providing inferences about Hildy and Walter’s past, present, and future relationship together and also about their own individual personalities. When Hildy first enters Walter’s office, adding a knock as an afterthought after she already entered, she introduces herself as the ‘ex-wife’ with a nonchalant confidence that immediately sets bells off in the audiences’ heads—the strong-willed, sassy, female ‘screwball’! Without missing a beat, Walter is introduced as the morally ambiguous yet dashing (as how can any character Cary Grant play not be dashing?) newspaperman that is too preoccupied with his work, i.e. getting a shave in the office, barking orders at Duffy to change the Morning Posts’ political bias in favor of being the first paper with ‘the story’. Throughout the scene, Hildy and Walter combine scathing insults that are more endearing than insulting (as they are delivered with sly grins and knowing smiles that intonate this is an old game for them; almost like inside jokes but keenly executed in a way that lets the audience in on them) with body language that speaks of an old intimacy (both are comfortable with such close proximities as sitting shoulder to shoulder on a desk while bitterly reminiscing about their failed honeymoon) and a continual pacing around the office, needlessly fiddling—Hildy reapplies lipstick, Walter fixes his tie, they smoke another cigarette, Hildy moves to occupy another space, checks the mirror, Walter follows, etc.; this is possibly the only implication that after four months they are nervous to be around each other/see each other but is more realistically a form of habit from careers spent waiting around for something exciting to happen. Perhaps it is a combination of both. In any event, all the facets of their interaction blend together to create this captivating routine. If this film were a dance it would be a fusion of the quickstep and the tango (author’s note: quango!). Regardless, Walter and Hildy utilize the office space in a much more meaningful way than just flowing aesthetics.
After multiple viewings of this scene, Hawks vision runs deeper than a man and a woman that attract conflict and tend to interrupt each other. In fact, this scene is not a happy quango. The entire scene is Walter and Hildy vying for control of space, thus control of the situation, thus control of the other. Hildy enters, calm, collected, and ready to be in control of the space despite it being Walter’s office. She is this way because she knows she has to be around the likes of Walter, who sniffs out peoples’ uncertainties and manipulates the situations into his favor, and also because she has some heavy bombs (engagement, early retirement, decision to explore a normal life) to drop on him that she is sure will waver his assumed superiority. Walter, on the other hand, competes for control because they are on his turf and, as a newspaper editor, he is used to easily engineering social interaction to his advantage. How they bring these goals to the screen without explicitly saying all this is Hawks’ direction—overlapping lines, cutting each other off, speaking louder than the other, trying to get one another to lose their cool (which Walter achieves a few times, notably when he claims he was ‘tight’ when he proposed and if she ‘had been a gentleman’ by not mentioning it the next morning, they would not have been married where in response, Hildy chucks her bag at him and he insults her further by saying she has bad aim), forcing the other to face them, and touching each other in commanding styles. Walter seems to be the winner for most of the unaddressed battles most likely because he has a motive—a goal—to be in control for, whereas Hildy just has information to slowly reveal. Walter’s motive is to either (or both) convince Hildy to stay at the newspaper and re-marry him.
However, Hildy may not be as good-intentioned as she appears. They are both “newspapermen” after all. Upon first encounter with Walter and Hildy, with their childlike one-upmanship and squabbles, one may think Hildy is making the correct choice in wanting to marry Bruce and retire from this business, that they are not good for each other. And yet, there is some truth (perhaps the only truth spoken from any-means-necessary Walter Burns) when he pleads, “We’ve got something between us nothing can change”. Hildy and Walter have more similarities than differences; it is only Hildy’s demand to live a normal life with a respectable husband that keeps them from being together. Hildy wants to go someplace “where she can be a woman,” with boring Bruce Baldwin but she does not act like a woman even as she is saying it, and whenever she talks about Bruce to Walter, the vibe that she emits is one of pure fantasy, a vague smile and a dreamy look in her eyes; a too-good-to-be-true countenance for a former pressroom journalist. Bruce Baldwin also happens to conveniently be Walter Burns’ antonym and she does not hold back from telling him so. Hildy is visibly most comfortable and excited when she is in the pressroom, playing poker and smoking cigarettes with the fellas, with her hat tipped back and tongue extra sharp, the only thing separating the guys from her is a pair of heels. Perhaps I am reading too deeply into a screwball comedy, but I have an inkling that Hildy is just as mischievous as Walter and she has been stringing the oblivious Baldwin along to help her scheme pan out—to make Walter jealous and change his ways when he sees how serious she is about Bruce and the retirement; the ‘scare’ of losing her to Bruce would straighten him out and perhaps get him to treat her decently. Another observation that supports this theory is the fact that Hildy ever even went to visit Walter, as she knows his personality and if she ever had the intention of retiring to Albany with Bruce she would have done so without contacting Walter. Near the end of the movie, she and Walter make a charmingly moral-less team while she does not seem to mind that Bruce is gone and has a terribly phony sob-fest in a last ditch effort to get Walter to treat her right (although she pays no mind to treating Bruce like last week’s dinner).
Regardless of that rather wordy interlude, the scene contains the DNA of Hawks’ vision because despite the rather dark content of the plot (murder, suicide, political corruption, execution, jaded view of humanity), the story is of two former lovers overcoming their differences by working together and both ultimately achieving their goal. This one scene encompasses what the legacy of Howard Hawk’s His Girl Friday is—quick thinking, fast-talking witty repartee between Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. One can view it as superficially as that, admire it for its timelessness or humor, or analyze it until one comes up with inane conspiracies about the moral fiber of a fictional female lead.

-Stella Blue, 3/2009, A-!