From That Little Round-Headed Boy:
"His Girl Friday": Anybody who ever worked in the journalism business, or wished they had been around for newspapering's madcap era, must feel a quickening at the opening tracking shot of Howard Hawks' classic comedy. As the camera tracks from right to left across the city room of the Chicago Morning Post, a smoky, hustling, chatty ambience hangs over the enterprise, as an editor yells out for a "Copy boy!", reporters are decked out in rolled-up shirts and green eye-shades, the women wear fashionable hats and the blue-collar switchboard gals are yammering in overdrive. The scene sets the fast-paced theme, and it never lets up.
JE: Good grief, TLRHB, that's a great one! (This should give readers an idea why they should check out TLRHB regularly.) As someone born with ink in his veins (red ink, I'm afraid), I know well the quickening of which you speak!
Enlarge image: "If anybody needs me I'll be down at the courthouse..." (Wasting no time, he starts speaking even before he enters the frame.)
(I'm rarely one to get nostalgic about old technology, except for vinyl LPs, but how I miss pneumatic tubes. I was thrilled to discover the long-lost, existentially absurd pneumatic tube graveyard on the final episode of "Lost" this past season.)
You're right -- this shot practically gives you whiplash (and it reminds me of another favorite opening, where the camera shoots with breakneck speed, diagonally across an office toward Griffin Dunne at his computerin Scorsese's "After Hours" -- propelled by Mozart's Symphony in D Major that, for the first time ever, sounds anxious, urban and neurotic).
It's actually an almost imperceptible blend of two shots, a quick dissolve that carries the motion from the first (following a woman across the newsroom) into the second, which comes to rest (momentarily) on the switchboard gals. A reporter comes into the shot from the right, exchanges a few words with the receptionists, and the camera then continues left with him as he hails an elevator going down. As he steps in, the up elevator opens and out steps Rosalind Russell and Ralph Belamy. The camera then reverses direction (bringing, as it turns out, the long-absent Hildy Johnson (Russell) back into the newsroom. Nice bit of business where fiance Bruce (Bellamy) holds the gate open for her. We move back to the switchboard, Hildy has a few words with the girls, and then darts out of frame left, as if she's just too quick for the camer -- the frame can't hold her for long. There's a cut, but it's just to a medium two-shot a few feet away, of her and Bruce.
This is a snappy, invigorating hardboiled ballet that leaves your head spinning (and the movie keeps you lightheaded for the next hour and a half). It's intended to feel like one shot, even though it technically isn't. (Now it would be done even more seamlessly with digital effects.) It's possible the camera is meant to pass through a wall, where the switchboards are mounted. This is a relatively flashy example of that "invisible editing" the great Hollywood classicists like Hawks were known for (and a reminder that Frank Capra was doing jump cuts long before Godard). I can't tell you how hard it was to stop watching "His Girl Friday" as I was looking at this shot just now. It's available in that beautiful recently released Cary Grant Box Set, along with two of my other all-time favorite movies, "Holiday" (George Cuckor, 1938) and "Only Angels Have Wings" (Hawks, 1939) -- PLUS the absolutely splendid "The Awful Truth" (Leo McCary, 1937) and "The Talk of the Town" (George Stevens, 1942).
2 Comments
FIne dissection; fantastic film. However, the film takes place in New York, not Chicago. Check the references to the "train to Albany," where "the governor lives."
In 2000, I did my first shot by shot of this film, noting how fast it moved, but also if you listened closely how much information was being given. The first shot for me is a title card, which appears before the actual shot of the men and women in the newsroom.
After opening credits, a title card shows text over an unfocused background of newspaper page: IT ALL HAPPENED IN THE “DARK AGES” OF THE NEWSPAPER GAME—WHEN TO A REPORTER “GETTING THAT STORY” JUSTIFIED ANYTHING SHORT OF MURDER. INCIDENTALLY YOU WILL SEE IN THIS PICTURE NO RESEMBLANCE TO THE MEN AND WOMEN OF THE PRESS TODAY. READY? WELL, ONCE UPON A TIME—
This lingers on screen for a good 15 seconds, and as we do we are awash with non-diegetic violin music. The ludicrousness of the lines, "It all happened in the Dark Ages" and "Once Upon a Time--" are in stark contrast each other? Did this happen, or is it a story, well, centered in the middle of the pages, in quotes are the lines. "Getting that story" implying, getting the "story" is not the true concern, or perhaps, stands for something else. Also, the lines, "Justified anything short of Murder." Meaning, there are any number of things that can be done, such as lie, cheat or steal. I often ask my own students, is there a conflict here? Often they will wonder what I mean, but a lot can happen anything short of murder.
If you watch this film, Walter (Cary Grant) isn't above lying to the police, sending people to jail, letting a woman jump out a window, writing a bad check--the list goes on, but right smack dab in the center of the page are the terms, "Men and Women" implying that whatever this message is, it involves men and women.
Hawks doesn't wait either--he gives us men and women immediately. Men and women moving, yelling, clicking typewriters and yelling. "Copy Boy!" Then, Hawk's brilliant dissolve reverses the roles on us. Inside the newsroom, the men are in the forefront of the screen. The women walk between them--dissolve, and the women are in the foreground, the lifeblood of the "Morning Post" the telephone operators, while behind them, young boys sort mail (male).
Our images of men are succinct. They Wear hats. They push through gates marked, No admittance and they don't stop. Enter Bruce and Hildy. Bruce has a hat, but has taken it off. He wears an overcoat, and in his left hand is an umbrella? Do any other men have umbrellas? No. Who wears her hat inside? Hildy pushes straight through the "No Admittance" sign without a blink, and what does Bruce do, apart from hold it open for her. He stays on the otherside, doing exactly what the sign says. So much is said about their relationship in so few moments, and what do we soon learn. Hildy tells Bruce to stay here. Hildy walks among the men, like a men, and as she finally crosses to Walter's officer, she enters like a man, bothering to knock after she has already entered.
The reader should know, this is going to be a film about men and women, and even the number of exchanges made by Hildy in the Newsroom show she is one of the boys, right down to the title of the film, a juxtaposition of words. "His Girl Friday. The very title itself has the male and female words in it and Hawkes' is about to play around with ideas of male and female all through his masterpiece, but if you blink or don't pay attention, you just might miss it.
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