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Keeping up with Hawks - Style in Cinema - filmmaker Howard Hawks

Style, Fall, 1998 by Lea Jacobs

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The next scene is also instructive on the differences between the two styles of staging. In Milestone's version, when Mary Brien (Peggy) enters, Menjou, talking on the phone, is standing beside the large table that dominates the room, in a position to the left of the door. O'Brien is seated typing at a smaller table off to the right of the door. Brien faces Menjou, then goes to O'Brien who rises, holding onto the typewriter. The movement that follows reprises the previous scene: Brien pursues O'Brien, who walks backwards, holding onto his typewriter. The camera tracks around the table with them (this shot, however, is interrupted by cutaways to Menjou). Brien and O'Brien walk almost a full revolution around the table, finally catching up to Menjou, who, of course, is still on the phone. O'Brien puts the typewriter down at the end of the table, the door directly behind him and Menjou off to the left. They finish the scene in this position, with Menjou moving directly behind O'Brien, so that he can exchange lines with Brien on her way out the door. In the Hawks version, Russell is seated at the end of the table with the door behind her and Cary Grant to her left. The only actor who moves during the scene is Ralph Bellamy who comes forward from the door and then exits out of it. There is no camera movement.

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It is not figure movement, but gesture (and this may be what Salt means by "business") that underscores the fast tempo of delivery in His Girl Friday. Take the example of the "Napoleon pose," a man standing with one hand resting in the lapels of his jacket. Menjou employs this pose in the scene in which he discusses women with Hildy. He holds the gesture for eighteen seconds, from the line"I was in love once, with my third wife," to the line ". . . end of story." Cary Grant steals this gesture and uses it twice: the first time in the scene with Rosalind Russell in his private office where he holds it for just over three seconds, during the line "nobody else on the paper that can write. This will break me. Unless . . . Hildy," and the second time in the scene in the pressroom, where he holds it for the duration of the phrase, "there'll be statues of you in the park," for about a second. The gestures of Hawks's actors tend to be light and rapid, like Grant's use of the Napoleon pose. In some respects the acting style reminds me of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century elocution manuals, which provided appropriate poses and gestures for oratory. His Girl Friday calls for an acting style that suits bodily gesture to verbal discourse, and the grace and speed with which Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell accomplish this is nothing short of breath-taking. This acting technique is the primary way that Hawks achieves a match between his dialogue and his mise en scene.

The nine-minute scene between Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell at the beginning of His Girl Friday is indicative of the way Hawks and his actors deploy gesture. There are three types of gesture - catalytic, phatic and symbolic - used here and elsewhere in the film. Catalytic gestures, which help to flesh out the narrative sequence of events, are composed of actions such as Grant putting a flower in his buttonhole or checking the knot on his tie, Russell putting on lipstick and powder or throwing her purse, and large scale components of blocking such as the actors getting up, sitting down, walking around the table,n Phatic gestures, which refer to the communicative interaction, include the interlocutors pointing at themselves and each other, such as Grant pointing to himself with his thumb during the line "Been seeing me in your dreams?" or, from later in the film when Mrs. Baldwin accuses him of kidnapping her, "Madame are you referring to me?" in which Grant points a finger at Bruce's mother and then uses his thumb to refer to himself. Other phatic gestures include claps on the back, one actor grabbing another's wrist to stress a point, holding up a hand in negation or assent. Symbolic gestures include the Napoleon pose and others that give an indication of a character's psychology or mental state, and also gestures that more directly illustrate the words being spoken: Russell making a running movement with her fingers on the phrase"chasing after fire engines" or Grant making a sweeping gesture with right hand palm up on "policies to the right of them" and with the left hand on "policies to the left of them."

Keeping up with Hawks - Style in Cinema - filmmaker Howard Hawks

Style, Fall, 1998 by Lea Jacobs

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