Digital Sextant

In my continuing quest to see movies I should have seen a while ago, I “Watch It Now”‘d His Girl Friday this afternoon while I spent two hours trying to keep Finn from crying. (I had him at one point and then the doomed prisoner escaped and a gunfight broke out, sending Finn into hysterics again.)

I generally like screwball comedies. I like It Happened One Night, Bringing up Baby, and Adam’s Rib, for instance. But only the last of those three has as much spite-equals-comedy as this film. I suppose we’re supposed to see Bruce as a chump, and Hildy and Burns as heroic individualists, but mostly I just find myself feeling sorry for the insurance salesman. Hildy’s clearly trying to do what advice columnists everywhere encourage: examining the problems with her choice in men and trying to change by going against her instinct. Alas, Burns is right in that she’s just as much a newspaperman as he. I think Bruce dodged one there.

That makes it sound like I didn’t enjoy the film, which I did. Here are a few bullets of stuff I liked:

• The much vaunted fast talking sat really well with me. It gave me insight into how Aaron Sorkin writes his screenplays: the manic effect of multiple characters dealing with multiple conversations and the rapid-fire patter keep the pace up where very little is actually happening.
• The mousey sadness of the murderer / death-row convict amused me quite a bit. His complaint that he’s “Just tired” and wants to “go back to my cell” was especially funny against the backdrop of the arguing Mayor and Sheriff.
• I was glad to see Gene Lockhart, who portrayed the hangdog judge in Miracle on 34th Street, as the bumbling Sheriff. Also hangdog.
• The macguffin of the criminal in the desk works really well; I suppose you might not call it a macguffin since the criminal gets found out, but there you are.
• I liked any moment where a character was talking on two phones simultaneously. TEll me that isn’t always funny.
• How can you dislike Cary Grant? I can’t.