Ben Hecht – Christian Sauvé

The Front Page (1931)

ByChristian Sauvé 2019-11-172023-03-18 Movie Review

(On Cable TV, November 2019) One of the reasons why Hollywood keeps remaking films is that in the best-case scenario, you don’t just have a decent commercial product with built-in brand recognition—you get a new classic that completely replaces the original. In theory, this can happen more easily because the remake can take a look at the original and improve upon its weaknesses. This is certainly not a new thing—Hollywood has been in the remake game since the silent era, and there was a particularly high number of remakes in the 1930 as the studios “upgraded” their silent films to more popular talkies. But I’m blurring lines, here, because if the 1931 version of The Front Page is an adaptation from a Broadway play (one co-written by Ben Hecht, who would become one of Hollywood’s first famous screenwriters), it’s not a remake. On the other hand, it was remade three times, and the first of them—1940’s His Girl Friday—has become an all-time classic eclipsing the 1931 original. (Meanwhile, the 1974 remake of the same name featuring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau is a pleasant but not essential diversion, while 1988’s Switching Channel is all but forgotten today.) Where I’m going with this epoch-spanning consideration of remakes is that considering the existence of His Girl Friday (the best take on the story) and the 1974 version (the most accessible one to modern audiences), only die-hard film historians or curious cinephiles have any reason to go back to the 1931 original. And yet: Had it never been remade, The Front Page would still be remembered as a funny screwball take on the tough-and-tumble world of print journalists at the turn of the 1930s, almost breathtaking in its Pre-Code cynicism. The technical qualities of the film are a bit rough, while Adolphe Menjou and Pat O’Brien are merely fine as the protagonists. It’s not a bad movie! But when put against His Girl Friday, it’s clear that director Lewis Milestone is not working in the same world-class league as Howard Hawks did in his remake, nor are the actors as crackling as they were in the remake. The film will forever work in the shadow of its successor—part of the proof being that the easier way to purchase the film today in its best quality is as an extra in the Criterion Edition of His Girl Friday. Sure, have a look if you’re already familiar with the other films … but see the other ones first if you haven’t.

Movie Review

Scarface (1932)

ByChristian Sauvé 2019-06-222023-03-19 Movie Review

(On TV, June 2019) The real star of Scarface may not be Paul Muni as a Capone-inspired gangster, nor superlative director Howard Hawks, nor legendary screenwriter Ben Hecht, but multi-talented producer Howard Hughes and his instinct for anticipating what the American public really wanted to see. By today’s standards, Scarface is promising but familiar fare—the last ninety years have led to a very large number of gangster pictures offering vicarious thrills by portraying (sometimes with a bit of moralistic tut-tutting) the life of gangsters. Martin Scorsese built a career on such movies, and they seem hardwired in Hollywood’s DNA. Examples reach into the silent era (notably Hughes’ The Racket), but Scarface, along with the slightly earlier Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, helped codify the genre even as real-life gangsters were laying waste to urban areas. It was tremendously successful, and just as influential—all the way to a much better-known 1983 remake penned by Oliver Stone and directed by Brian de Palma. This original is much rougher—hailing from the early days of sound cinema, it does have a wild energy to it, and a good turn from Muni. While modern viewers won’t appreciate the innovation of the film in staging complex action sequences (including some savvy special-effects work!), the result on-screen looks and feels a lot like more modern movies. Pre-Code audiences liked it (even Al Capone was reportedly a fan), but Scarface raised so much controversy that it was shelved by Hugues and effectively disappeared for decades before resurfacing in the post-Production Code 1970s. Now, contemporary audiences can see what had been unavailable to prior generations and appreciate the result for themselves, as a hard-hitting gangster film that pushed the envelope and remains absorbing in itself. I’m sure Hughes would approve.