The Front Page (1974)

Directed by: Billy Wilder | 105 minutes | comedy, drama | Actors: Jack Lemmon, Walther Matthau, Susan Sarandon, Vincent Gardenia, David Wayne, Allen Garfield, Austin Pendleton, Charles Durning, Herb Edelman, Martin Gabel, Harold Gould, Cliff Osmond, Dick O’Neill, Jon Korkes, Lou Frizzell, Paul Benedict, Doro Merande, Noam Pitlik, Joshua Shelley, Allen Jenkins, John Furlong, Biff Elliot, Barbara Davis, Leonard Bremen, Carol Burnett

At sixteen, Ben Hecht (1894-1964) fled a Wisconsin dormitory town to make it in Chicago. There he roamed the streets and said he was a regular at brothels, police stations, courts, theaters, prisons, saloons, slums, institutions, chic banquet halls and bookstores and was an eyewitness to arson, riots and murders. He entered journalism and became a widely respected reporter for first The Chicago Journal and later The Chicago Daily News. After the First World War he was sent to Berlin as a correspondent and in 1921 he published his first novel. He also ventured into plays and along with Charles MacArthur, a friend and fellow journalist, moved to New York in the mid-1920s to devote himself entirely to stage and film scripts. In Hollywood, he would be best known for his crime thrillers and screwball comedies. Hecht’s best-known screenplays are ‘Scarface’ (1932), ‘Wuthering Heights’, ‘It’s a Wonderful World’ (both 1939), the Hitchcock films ‘Spellbound’ (1945) and ‘Notorious’ (1946) and ‘Monkey Business’ ( 1952) with Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe (although he co-wrote dozens of other well-known films, sometimes without taking credit for them). But by far the most often filmed is ‘The Front Page’, a play that MacArthur and Hecht wrote in 1928. The first film adaptation, by Lewis Milestone, dates from 1931; more famous is the great 1940 version by Howard Hawks, who turned it into one of the most legendary screwball comedies under the title ‘His Girl Friday’.

Normally not a fan of remakes, Billy Wilder was seduced by film producer Jennings Lang in the early 1970s to abandon his faith and make a remake of Ben Hechts and Charles MacArthur’s hit song ‘The Front Page’. Wilder himself had once started as a journalist and the profession still had a strong appeal to him. “A reporter was a prestigious guy at the time; as he wore his hat and raincoat, and his swagger; the camaraderie with his colleagues, with the local police; always there when something happened.” Wilder decided not to bring the story into modern times, but to have it set in 1929, especially since the newspaper had already relinquished its function as the main bringer of news to television in the mid-1970s. Unlike “His Girl Friday,” the character Hildy Johnson is “just” another man; he is played in Wilder’s version of ‘The Front Page’ (1974) by none other than Jack Lemmon. Wilder and Lemmon had a special friendship, which had already resulted in very successful collaborations in ‘Some Like it Hot’ (1959), ‘The Apartment’ (1960) and – to a lesser extent – ​​’Irma La Douce’ (1963) and ‘ Avanti!’ (1972). With Walter Matthau they made ‘The Fortune Cookie’ in 1966 and Wilder turned back his pension especially for Lemmon and Matthau to make his very last film ‘Buddy, Buddy’ (1981) together. The third film the three gentlemen made together was ‘The Front Page’.

Hildebrand ‘Hildy’ Johnson (Jack Lemmon), star reporter for The Chicago Examiner, has just resigned to marry his fiancée Peggy Grant (a young Susan Sarandon) and embark on a new career. However, his ruthless, self-centered editor-in-chief Walter Burns (Walter Matthau) desperately wants to keep him for the paper and does everything in his power to persuade Hildy to stay. Denial, swearing and lure don’t work, so Burns has to dig deeper into his bag of tricks to find a way to keep his best man. It’s the day before the infamous, death-row communist Earl Williams (Austin Pendleton) is executed, and all of Chicago is waiting with bated breath for that to happen. Every newspaper in town has sent a man to come back with the best, most spectacular, or juiciest story, and Burns sends Hildy. He actually has to catch a train to join his fiancée and is initially not interested in the story about Earl Williams. But the blood creeps where it can’t go, especially when the death row inmate manages to escape and suddenly reappears in front of Hildy!

Wilder certainly didn’t think ‘The Front Page’ was one of his best films – he regretted being persuaded to make a remake – but he’s doing himself a disservice. This film is hilarious and that is largely due to the legendary duo Lemmon-Matthau. Matthau, in particular, steals the show as the shrewd editor-in-chief, who pulls out all the stops to keep his chief reporter. Lemmon is a bit more subdued than the lobbes who let themselves be put in front of the cart again. The razor-sharp dialogues are dripping with cynicism and are fired at the viewer at lightning speed and the hectic atmosphere of the newspaper world is aptly portrayed. Wilder also closes his film in a great way, with his own take on how the characters have fared. Of course there are also caveats to be made; towards the end the events pile up just a bit too fast and some characters are quite caricatured (Carol Burnett’s prostitute Mollie Malloy for example). And Susan Sarandon unfortunately does not come into its own at all. But the synergy between Lemmon, Matthau and Wilder is unmistakable, the screenplay by Hecht and MacArthur is still rock solid. In combination with the thunderous pace and the sometimes bland but generally fantastic humor, this makes ‘The Front Page’, just like ‘His Girl Friday’, a must-see for lovers of the better comic work.