The Front Page

The Front Page is yet another adaptation of the play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, the most famous of which was probably Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday. This Billy Wilder-directed adaptation features Walter Matthau in the Cary Grant role and Jack Lemmon in the Rosalind Russell role.

Wilder, along with his writing partner I.A.L. Diamond, tries to beef up the story’s dramatic elements, depicting newspapers and their employees as callous, bloodthirsty jackals hungry for human suffering to feed their presses. The problem is that it doesn’t work. The story’s just too farciful to support the drama Wilder and Diamond want to hang on it.

Granted, Matthau and Lemmon do a fine job, as does Austin Pendleton in a scene-stealing supporting role, but they can’t compensate for the film’s uneven tone. Wilder’s usually the master of mixing comedy and drama, but locking himself into Hecht and MacArthur’s plot proved to be his undoing.

Ultimately, The Front Page offers little reason to choose it over His Girl Friday. While the teaming of Matthau, Lemmon, and Wilder is intriguing, their earlier collaboration, The Fortune Cookie, is a better choice.