{"id":44258,"date":"2020-04-02T21:43:04","date_gmt":"2020-04-03T02:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=44258"},"modified":"2020-04-02T23:15:25","modified_gmt":"2020-04-03T04:15:25","slug":"light-up-with-hildy-johnson-the-nyt-viewing-party-for-his-girl-friday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2020\/04\/02\/light-up-with-hildy-johnson-the-nyt-viewing-party-for-his-girl-friday\/","title":{"rendered":"Light up with Hildy Johnson: The NYT viewing party for HIS GIRL FRIDAY"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/HGF-3-600.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-44260\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/HGF-3-600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"447\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/HGF-3-600.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/HGF-3-600-150x112.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/HGF-3-600-403x300.jpg 403w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>DB here:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/manohla-dargis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Manohla Dargis<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/a-o--scott\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">A. O. Scott<\/a> have had the excellent idea of picking a film for readers to watch over the weekend and inviting them to write about it. Here&#8217;s the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/04\/02\/movies\/weekend-viewing-party-virus.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">viral viewing scheme.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll be keen to read what the multitudes have to say.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested, our site has paid homage to this classic several times. First I rehearsed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2008\/02\/21\/creating-a-classic-with-a-little-help-from-your-pirate-friends\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a bit of history<\/a> about how it snuck into university courses. Then I wrote<a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2017\/01\/16\/my-girl-friday-and-his-and-yours\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> an appreciation of it<\/a> to accompany the release of the packed Criterion disc. (Find out why it&#8217;s called <em>His Girl Friday!<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>That disc release included a video essay in which I analyzed some things that fascinate me about this endless enjoyable movie. The video now <a href=\"https:\/\/www.criterionchannel.com\/his-girl-friday\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">accompanies the film<\/a> on the Criterion Channel. There&#8217;s a vast trove of Hawksiana there as well, with expert comments and background information.<\/p>\n<p>From its first edition in 1979, our textbook\u00a0<em>Film Art: An Introduction\u00a0<\/em>has used the film as a prime example of classical Hollywood storytelling<em>. <\/em>My colleagues Lea Jacobs and Vance Kepley have written a lot about it too. It&#8217;s <em>the<\/em>\u00a0movie of our whole Wisconsin film studies program.<\/p>\n<p>What more do you want? The 1940s. Hawks. Grant, Russell, the sublimely sincere Ralph Bellamy. <em>His Girl Friday<\/em> draws breakneck comedy out of \u00a0how the fast-talking and quick-witted can trounce the fumblers and boobs. (Would that it happened in real life.) The whole carnival is played out by one of the greatest scramble of sharp-edged character actors in Hollywood history.<\/p>\n<p>And thanks for reading the second paragraph.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Thanks to Peter Becker, Kim Hendrickson, Curtis Tsui, and all their colleagues at Criterion for making this Hawksapalooza possible.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Cary-oil-600.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-44259\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Cary-oil-600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"528\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Cary-oil-600.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Cary-oil-600-150x132.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Cary-oil-600-341x300.jpg 341w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DB here: Manohla Dargis and A. O. Scott have had the excellent idea of picking a film for readers to watch over the weekend and inviting them to write about it. Here&#8217;s the\u00a0viral viewing scheme. I&#8217;ll be keen to read what the multitudes have to say. If you&#8217;re interested, our site has paid homage to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[224,262,67,1,34,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1940s-hollywood","category-criterion-channel","category-directors-hawks","category-film-comments","category-people-we-like","category-uw-film-studies-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44258"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44266,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44258\/revisions\/44266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}