Spéciale première

The Front Page was the 12th, and 9th credited, feature film directed by Lewis Milestone, Russian Jewish emigré born in what is now Moldova in 1895 whose directing career spanned from the end of WWI to the early days of the Beatles, thus the core of the XXth Century. A director of moderate talent, Milestone enjoyed disproportionate renown in his day, directing everything from screen adaptations of Brodaway comedies, inter alia the effort under review, and musicals, to prestige literary adaptations such as All Quiet on the Western Front (1930, for which he won an Oscar for best director, which, helás, didn´t make him a better director...) or Of Mice and Men (1939), graduating in the 50s to big budget productions like Les Misérables (1952) or Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). Fun factoid: he also directed the original Ocean´s 11 (1960) the first film to feature the full Rat Pack.

The Front Page adapts to the screen an eponymous play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, about a group of hardboiled Chicago newspapermen bent on scooping on the imminent execution of a presumed subversive agitator (George E Stone), mandatory love interest provided by the scheduled wedding of journalist Hildy Johnson (Pat O´Brien, much more at ease playing Irish priests and the like) to fiancée Peggy Grant (Mary Briant), event which conflicts with the professional duties, interests and urges of Hildy.

The Front Page was one of the first films to use the rotambulator, an ancestor of the dolly, which allowed for a few press room sequences with dialogue shot in circular motion, not unlike similar scenes in much later efforts by Quentin Tarantino (viz Reservoir Dogs, 1992), providing for some relief for what otherwise comes across as excessive, undestandably in a stage adaptation and an early talkie, talkyness. The remaining relief comes from Ben Hecht´s delighful dialogue.

Supplementary sort of interest for contemporary viewers is the political and sexual innuendo, both verbal and physical, that pre-code comedy allowed. For all this, in 2010, The Front Page was included in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in consideration of it being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

All aforementioned qualities nothwistanding, the films lives of script and dialogue mostly, and direction is often unimaginative and delivery wooden. Onliners do save the show. A favourite: Hildy´s boss Walter Burns (Adolphe Menjou, best on screen) to Hildy, trying to persuade him not to folllow Cupid´s ephemeral lure and stay in the newspaper business: "Yes, I know, I too was in love once, with my third wife...".

One of the biggest problems facing filmmakers in the early sound era was not a technical one, but one of what form the stories should take. Now that the spoken word was a means of expression, stage plays became a prime source for movie material. The only trouble was that, while the theatre is not necessarily an inferior medium, if you shoot a play simply as it is, no matter how good it would be in the theatre, on the screen it becomes static and dull. There are ways round this problem, and they demonstrate how much of a difference it makes the way in which a movie is filmed.

The Front Page's director, Lewis Milestone, was an ostentatious attention-grabber who liked to make every use of the technology at hand. But all his showing-off was for a purpose. As oppose to the limited dimensions of the stage, Milestone is always staging things in extremes of width and depth, especially when introducing major characters. A really neat manoeuvre is when a cop visits the newsroom during a game of poker. The camera sits on the middle of the small table and pans round as each reporter is harangued in turn. A man walking round a table is a fairly low-key bit of business, but this technique makes it simply whirl. There is only one point where I feel it's too much, when the camera "bounces" up and down on the faces of the reporters as they sing a taunting song. But the great thing is Milestone also knows when to tone it down and let the players shine. He often uses a long, still take for a key scene, such as Pat O'Brien and Adolphe Menjou's talk at the bar.

But an equally important contribution is the sense of realistic camaraderie between the principle members of the cast. The atmosphere in the newsroom straddles comedic exuberance and realistic banter, and as such is absolutely in the spirit of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's original work. Adolphe Menjou shows impeccable control, with movements that are almost cartoonish, such as the little backward lean into his stride off after announcing "I'll kill him!" It's a fresh approach, but one that would catch on, being very much the vein of Clark Gable's Oscar-winning performance in It Happened One Night (1934). Lead man Pat O'Brien is at his most extrovert and, in the process, his most likable. Walter Catlett is unflappably brilliant, and there is also a chance to see Edward Everett Horton honing the persona that would make him a fixture throughout the next decade.

The result is probably the most vibrant and effective stage adaptation of the early talkies, and it set the tone of much of what was to come, straddling the gap between the wild farce of the Marx Brothers and the sophisticated comedies like Dinner at Eight. Later directors (George Cukor, most notably) would learn to tone down Milestone's approach and create stage-to-screen adaptations that flowed smoothly and were purely cinematic, but The Front Page was nevertheless an important jolt to an industry still trying to find its way, and a lesson in how to make a script low on action and confined in space into something dynamic and brassy.

Although Howard Hawks gave The Front Page a different twist by making Hildy Johnson a woman and giving her a romantic involvement with editor Walter Burns, The Front Page still holds up well today for its biting wit.

All the clichés about newspapers as portrayed on film originate with this work. Lewis Milestone assembled a great cast of character actors as the gang in the press room and the lines they toss back and forth at each other are priceless. Even better were some of the lines at the expense of the self important political and law enforcement figures they cover.

I suppose it's the nature of the job that makes newsmen cynical. But this group takes it to an exponential level. Frank Capra did something very similar in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. When newly appointed interim Senator James Stewart arrives in town and they make him out a buffoon, Stewart goes around punching out all of them he can find. When he does reach the Capitol Press Room, the whole group of them Thomas Mitchell, Jack Carson, Charles Lane, etc. bring him up quite short. That group of correspondents could easily have been in the press room in The Front Page. I have no doubt that Capra was inspired by Milestone's work in The Front Page.

The casting of the leads is quite a story. Pat O'Brien had played Walter Burns on stage and someone in the Howard Hughes organization got their wires crossed and signed him for Hildy Johnson. O'Brien made the switch effortlessly though.

Lewis Milestone originally wanted Louis Wolheim with whom he'd worked the year before in All Quiet on the Western Front. But then Wolheim died suddenly right before filming was to start. Adolphe Menjou was hurriedly substituted and he proved to be an inspired choice.

When The Front Page was done on the Broadway stage the roles of Johnson and Burns were played by Lee Tracy and Osgood Perkins. I could see either of them in their respective parts. Both got to Hollywood, but too late to do either part for the screen.

The two female roles of note were Johnson's fiancé Peggy and the streetwalker who had befriended convicted killer George E. Stone who's execution the reporters are covering. Mae Clarke as the prostitute is just fine. A tough year for Mae, she jumps through a window here and gets slugged with a grapefruit later on in Public Enemy.

Mary Brian is the fiancé and in an underwritten part, she's dull as dishwater. Not her fault because the film is about the guys. But seeing this, no wonder Howard Hawks got the inspired idea to eliminate her, create THE Ralph Bellamy part and make Hildy Johnson a woman for His Girl Friday.

Of course The Front Page has the look and feel of the era that birthed it. But the portrait of newspapermen is still fresh and the issues raised about crooked politicians running on "law and order" platforms is probably even more relevant today than back then.

The camera-work on this underrated beauty is breathtaking - one of the panning shots in the newsroom precedes Woody Allen's restaurant pan shot in Hannah and Her Sisters by over half a century! It is so organic, yet so breezy and alive. Don't miss the clever panning action with the gun sequence, and the mirrored room with the man getting off the elevator, which is also a throw-away gem. The actors are some of the finest character and bit players ever assembled on screen and the lightning dialog and clever editing is really quite modern in its speed and ingenuity.

I too am a devoted fan of His Girl Friday, but these are two very different films. Front Page is a masterpiece of old school ensemble character acting, and without it to break new ground, I don't believe His Girl Friday would have had nearly the breakneck pacing and out of the bottle genius that it is rightfully remembered for. The Front Page should take an esteemed place in film history for being the fertile breeding ground of screwball comedy in general and many of its masterpieces, including His Girl Friday, in particular. A must see for 1930's film buffs and screwball comedy fanatics!

THE FRONT PAGE (1931) is a snappy, quick-witted comedy about a newspaper man trying to leave the business and get married while his peers scramble to cover the story of the year. The movie is based on a stage play, and the same story was adapted (with some tweaks) in 1940 for Howard Hawks's brilliant HIS GIRL_FRIDAY, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.

I absolutely love HIS GIRL_FRIDAY and wasn't expecting much from this earlier and lesser-known version. But I must say that THE FRONT PAGE is itself a terrific film that, though slightly different (but mostly similar), is just as great as HIS GIRL_FRIDAY. (The wonderful humor must be inherent in the original play.)

The ensemble cast is superb, including Pat O'Brien as the soon-to-be-married star reporter, Adolphe Menjou as his big shot editor, Clarence Wilson as the harassed sheriff, George E. Stone as a condemned man, and a roomful of reporters including Frank McHugh, Walter Catlett, and Edward Everett Horton.

Made in 1931, early on in the sound era, the movie certainly looks pretty old. But I thought it was great. The script is very witty and the direction (by Oscar-winner Lewis Milestone) is good. I particularly enjoyed the direction in the pressroom scenes, with all of the reporters and all of the phones and the various snippets of conversation.

Also, being a "pre-code" comedy, there are some bits that might have been deemed too vulgar had the film been made only a few years later. There are some allusions to promiscuity, some almost swear words, and even a brief instance of "flipping the bird".

HIS GIRL_FRIDAY (1940) is an all-time classic screwball comedy. But if you enjoyed that film, you're sure to love THE FRONT PAGE (1931). The story is basically the same (there's less of a romantic angle as the star reporter is a man in this version), but a lot of the jokes are fresh. And this version offers wonderful performances by Menjou, Catlett, Horton, et al. Both movies are delightful comedies, and it's too bad that this earlier version isn't as well remembered as its remake.

THE FRONT PAGE is a classic in its own right, and was nominated for three big Academy Awards: Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture. I'd definitely recommend checking it out whenever you can find it.