Just finished talking HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940) with a fine group of folks. At this point, I don& #39;t even consider it a comedy anymore - but, and this might be shaving it too fine - a scabrous social satire about the psychopathology of media and the sociopathology of government.

It& #39;s funny in the way IDIOCRACY is funny and would work exceedingly well sandwiched between ACE IN THE HOLE (1951) and MEDIUM COOL (1969). It is exceedingly, devastatingly clear-eyed about corruption and the symbiotic relationship between Press and Politics. Goebbels got this.

We do the film a grave disservice when we dismiss its ugliness as a hallmark of a less-enlightened time. People in 1940 knew this stuff was wrong. Consider how Walter Burns has no character arc - how the only good person in the film is seen as slow-witted, dim - and critically,

consider the unexamined fate of Mollie Malloy who, because one man showed her kindness in the midst of a world full of financial desperation, Russian interference and race wars, tries to save him by killing herself as a distraction. It proves only a momentary one. Chilling.

HIS GIRL FRIDAY, for all its prescience, predicts nothing. Rather, it lays bare the essential ugliness in our natures: our need for quick gratification, glorious distraction concurrent with diminished attention span. Animals in clothes pretending to be about important business.

If forced to, I would push it from the Screwball genre into the noir. Poor Bruce the sop to femme Hildy - the prototypical "tough-talking dame". The world is broken down and crumbling - already in ruins. The only currency of value is slickly-delivered cynicism. Stunning.