No doubt about it, the script for Lewis Milestone's 1931 comedy The Front Page was fast. But in 1939, Howard Hawks gave it a turbo charge by making Cary Grant the conniving newspaper editor out to stop his star reporter - - and now ex-wife - - Rosalind Russell marrying mummy's boy Ralph Bellamy. Fast? It's practically supersonic. Jaws locked on full-auto, Grant and Russell beggar belief as they motormouth through an overlapping avalanche of in-jokes, plot twists and fizzing witticisms.
It's a miraculous balancing act from Hawks, who keeps death-row drama bleeding under the movie's screwball skin to give this frantic battle of the sexes a fiendishly dark sophistication. Damn near the fastest, funniest 92 minutes in cinema history.
DVD Extras:
Four brief featurettes make fab appetisers for the movie, but the big pull here is a commentary by Variety's top film critic and Hawks biographer, Todd McCarthy. He's made of the right stuff and his intelligent chatter is well worth listening to. It's frustrating, then, that in such a motormouth of a movie, McCarthy is the only one who sometimes stops talking.
