Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29806 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-05-02
• Formats: Full Screen, Surround Sound
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 90 minutes

Amazon.com
Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's classic 1928 newspaper play, has had three official film versions and contributed structural DNA to half the movies ever made about professional camaraderie and fierce love-hate friendships. Lewis Milestone's 1931 movie is well respected (Billy Wilder's 1974 version isn't), but this is one case where the remake towers brilliantined head and blocked shoulders above the original. Howard Hawks had the inspired notion of making Hildy Johnson--the ace newsman whom demonic editor Walter Burns is trying to keep from quitting and getting married--a she instead of a he. What's more, she's not only Walter's star reporter but also his ex-wife. When Hildy (Rosalind Russell) comes to tell Walter (Cary Grant) she's leaving the newspaper business, he bamboozles her into carrying out one last assignment--a death-row interview with a little nebbish (John Qualen) convicted of killing a policeman. It sounds like a snap, but before you can say screwball comedy, the press room of the Criminal Courts Building has become ground zero for all the lunacy a jailbreak, a shooting, an impromptu suicide, a corrupt city administration, and the most Machiavellian "hero" in the American cinema can supply. The best thing about this Triad Productions DVD is the cleaned-up print, which makes the rich black-and-white cinematography as crisp as the banter.This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.

Customer Reviews

A good transfer and an overall quality production
There are a ton of bargin bin versions of this movie out there. Most of them are less than $10 dollars and what you get is a transfer that looks like it was done from VHS to DVD. The sound is always poor and crackles and if you try to watch it on anything larger than a 25 inch TV, it looks stretched and distorted.

This copy seems to have been run through and remaster and noise reduction. The picture is crisp and the sound is clean. I watched this on my 50+ inch HDTV and it looks good.

Great Director and Stars at Their Very, Very Best
This review pertains to this version of His Girl Friday. I noticed a bad review and had to post this in response. My version recieved has no missing scenes. I believe that gentleman just got a defective copy. He should return it to Amazon instead of misleading people. This is by far the best version of this film I have owned. The video quality is clearly enhanced and the sound is clean and crisp

With Howard Hawks in the director's chair and Cary Grant in the lead role, you're pretty much guaranteed to have a good time. His Girl Friday isn't the first or last film adaptation of the 1928 play The Front Page, but it is easily the best. This thing comes at you a mile a minute, with dialogue that starts out at break-neck speed and never slows down and more humorous moments than you can find time to laugh at. It's an unusual romantic comedy, given the fact that Cary Grant's character is a little less than noble (he is a rather ruthless newspaper man, after all) and the nice guy in the picture is lucky to finish at all, but there's still something endearing about the whole relationship between Walter Burns (Grant) and his former ace reporter Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell), who also happens to be his ex-wife (in earlier adaptations of the story, Hildy was just a darn good male reporter). Hildy is due to get married in less than 24 hours, and Burns is desperate to win her back - for the newspaper as well as himself. The big city proves most cooperative in his endeavors, with a corrupt sheriff and mayor getting set to hang a "dangerous" little man for murder in order to bolster their bids for reelection in three days. And that's only the beginning of this screwball comedy story. This battle of the sexes turns into one of the most impressive battles of wits the big screen has ever seen, and the whole wild and crazy story makes for an extraordinary experience.

Best version or best shills?
Although I personally love this movie, I noticed that almost all of the reviewers of this version (supposedly "real name" ones as well) seem to be the same person, probably an employee of Triad Productions. I noticed that by clicking the "see all my reviews" hyperlink underneath the reviewers' names gave me a list of the products they had reviewed, and nearly all of them were movies produced by Triad Productions, and all were reviewed extremely favorably. Therefore, I have concluded that this is the same phenomena seen in the Dilbert cartoon [...] .
I find it highly suspicious that the reviewers of this product just happen to have written all their reviews about Triad Productions films and given all of them very favorable ratings.
This may be just a coincidence, but if it is it certainly is a huge one.