His Girl Friday (Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray)

His Girl Friday (Criterion Collection) - 1940 - BLU-RAY

One of the fastest, funniest, and most quotable films ever made, His Girl Friday stars Rosalind Russell as reporter Hildy Johnson, a standout among cinema’s powerful women. Hildy is matched in force only by her conniving but charismatic editor and ex-husband, Walter Burns (played by the peerless Cary Grant), who dangles the chance for her to scoop her fellow newswriters with the story of an impending execution in order to keep her from hopping the train that’s supposed to take her to Albany and a new life as a housewife. When adapting Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s smash hit play The Front Page, director Howard Hawks had the inspired idea of turning star reporter Hildy Johnson into a woman, and the result is an immortal mix of hard-boiled newsroom setting with remarriage comedy. Also presented here is a brand-new restoration of the 1931 The Front Page, the famous pre-Code adaptation of the same material, directed by Lewis Milestone.

TWO-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• New 2K restoration of Lewis Milestone’s The Front Page (1931), made from a recently discovered print of the director’s preferred version
• New interview with film scholar David Bordwell about His Girl Friday
• Archival interviews with director Howard Hawks
• Featurettes from 1999 about Hawks, actor Rosalind Russell, and the making of His Girl Friday
• Radio adaptation of His Girl Friday from 1940
• New piece about the restoration of The Front Page
• New piece about playwright and screenwriter Ben Hecht
• Radio adaptations of the play The Front Page from 1937 and 1946
• His Girl Friday trailers
• PLUS: A booklet featuring essays on His Girl Friday and The Front Page by film critics Farran Smith Nehme and Michael Sragow

FEATURES:

• DIRECTOR: Howard Hawks
• FEATURES:

COMEDY

• WIDESCREEN
• B&W
• ASPECT RATIO: 1.33:1
• UNCOMPRESSED MONAURAL PCM
• 92 Minutes
• LANGUAGES: ENGLISH

RATED: NR

Starring: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall, Ernest Truex, Cliff Edwards, Clarence Kolb, Roscoe Karns, Frank Jenks, Regis Toomey, Abner Biberman, Frank Orth, John Qualen, Helen Mack, Alma Kruger, Billy Gilbert, Pat West, Edwin Maxwell