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Keeping up with Hawks - Style in Cinema - filmmaker Howard Hawks
Style, Fall, 1998 by Lea Jacobs
Given that the calculated use of a slow-talking character seems to be a standard way of achieving variation in speech rhythm for Hawks, I find it very interesting that there is no such bifurcation in His Girl Friday.(3) Possible candidates for this kind of organization are the scenes in which Walter meets Bruce, a subsequent scene in which they are alone together and the first scene between the Mayor and Pettibone. In the first instance, Ralph Bellamy has so little to say that one does not have a sense of an independent rhythm of speech, but simply a sense of a periodic interruption in the stream of Cary Grant's language. The later scene, in which Bruce makes out an insurance policy for Walter, is actually one of the slowest in the film, 2.9 w/s, since Grant slows down to match Bellamy's speech rhythm while describing his vision of an aging Hildy. In the last instance, while some of Billy Gilbert's interjections as Pettibone may seem slow, and his double takes necessarily require a pause, this slowness is countered by the frequent overlapping of dialogue (the Mayor's lines are lapped over his more and more frequently as the scene proceeds) as well as the relative brevity of his responses so that the scene finishes quite fast, 4.6 w/s. Thus, most of the characters seem to talk quickly most of the time in His Girl Friday.
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It is not at the level of individual performances, but at the level of the scene that Hawks modulates tempo in His Girl Friday. There are contrasts between the tempo of one short scene and the next, and sometimes within a scene for all of the speaking characters. The most dramatic instance of these contrasts is the change from lots of talk to almost none (3.8 to 0.7 w/s) in the scene where Molly is expelled from the pressroom. The scene of Earl Williams's escape is structured similarly around a pronounced rhythmic shift. In this case the change is a function of sound effects - Hildy's farewell speech to the reporters giving way to rapid volleys of gun shots set against the wail of a siren - and editing - the pace picks up with quick cut graphic matches of the reporters on the phones conveying the news of the jail break.
Modulations are also achieved through more subtle variations in speaking tempo. Consider the scenes leading up to Molly's leap from the window. After having hidden Earl Williams in the desk, Molly and Hildy confront the reporters returning to phone. The reporters' speech as they talk on the phone and pester Molly for news is 4.5 w/s. Then, when Murphy walks over to the window and raises the shade, there is a pronounced six-second pause. Other reporters follow and speculate about how Earl might have gotten into the building. The rate of speech here, including the pause, is 3.6 w/s. Speech rate then picks up over the end of this scene and the beginning of the next, the previous slow passage helping to strengthen the sensation of speed. The reporters begin to get suspicious of Hildy's attempt to get them to leave the room and gather around her. When Mrs. Baldwin enters, her mention of the "murderer" increases their suspicion. At 6 w/s in this short passage, the dialogue is one of the fastest in the film, with the reporters chiming in one after another, and much of the dialogue overlapped. Once Molly begins her attempt to distract the reporters, she speaks somewhat longer lines not overlapped with others, and the scene returns to 4.5 w/s, a speed that continues until she jumps from the window. If one compares this scene with its equivalent in The Front Page, Hawks's version is much less motivated. Spending about three times as long, 1:21 versus 37 seconds, the Milestone version leads up to Molly's flight to the window ledge by showing the reporters hound her (in a prior scene between Earl and Molly, Milestone also introduces the idea of Molly as the "noble" prostitute by having Earl comment on the beauty of her character). I believe that one of the reasons Hawks can get away with the lack of motivation for Molly's leap is simply the speed of delivery, with the accelerating pace of the reporters' questions increasing the pressure on both Hildy and Molly intolerably. And slowing all of the actors down slightly in the previous scene serves by contrast to emphasize the acceleration that is so necessary to his pacing of this event.
