Movie: His Girl Friday (1940)

Recently in Media Criticism class we watched the 1940's romantic comedy movie called "His Girl Friday". The movie stars Cary Grant, who plays Walter Burns, Rosalind Russell, playing Hildy Johnsan, Ralph Bellamy, and playing Bruce Baldwin. The black and white film shows a journalistic world, and relationships involved in between. The movie portrays cognitive, emotional, moral, and aesthetic behavioral effects.

For a quick summary of the movie, Walter and Hildy used to be married, and they worked in the newspaper business together. Hildy then leaves the business for a bit, and then comes back and tells Walter that she's marrying Bruce. Bruce is somewhat slow, and boring. When Walter finds this out, he wants to win Hildy back. His way of doing this is by having her work for the newspaper, to show her how they both love journalism. What perfect timing, a huge story is unfolding about Earl Williams, who was accused of murder and is going to be hung. Hildy eventually takes the Earl Williams story because Walter tells her he will buy insurance from her new fiance (Bruce). Hildy writes the story as promised, but tears it up because she never said she wouldn't do that (tricky girl)! She does this when she finds out Walter took Bruce's wallet and made it look like Bruce stole a watch. Earl Williams escapes and ends up in the writing room for the newspaper, where it just happens to be Hildy is. This creates the best opportunity for Hildy to get her story on the front page of the newspaper. She phones Walter, and the two quickly work together to try to keep everyone else from knowing they know where Earl Williams is. Bruce once again ends up in jail, but this time Hildy can't save him because of the story she is writing and because of the fugitive in the writing room! This creates the scenario for Earl leaving to NY without Hildy, and Hildy realizing how fond she is of Walter.

With that said, Hildy and Walter are two journalist who happen to be unraveling a great story in front of their eyes, while Walter is trying to win back Hildy, his ex-wife. Both Hildy and Walter end up doing any thing to get their hands on the unfolding story.

Cognitively, this movie allows the viewer to see how crazy a journalist life could be. It lets viewers think about how stories are written and portrayed in newspapers. His Girl Friday especially shows that there can be different views to every story.

Emotionally, His Girl Friday takes the viewer on a love triangle between Walter, Hildy and Bruce. The viewer may get tangled in the energy and witty dialogue between one another. The speedy dialogue makes it so you can barely take your eyes off the screen while watching it, or even think about taking a breath because it is so quickly paced. The movies emotional aspects become especially heated towards the end when Hildy becomes more excited to be a part of the paper, and Walter does any thing to keep Hildy from going away to NY with Bruce.

As for moral elements in the film, they are portrayed when the people watching the film get a sense of the characters values and ethics. The viewer could also compare this to real journalist and their ethical values. The film shows how the truth can be twisted in news, and how sometimes unethical things may take part in getting and creating a journalistic story.

Aesthetically, the black and white film is very different from modern film that I am used to. The black and white created the older look of course, but also set the stage for the different type of sarcasm. With all this, I think the film had a lot of character, and the humor especially helped with this.