Welcome to another Oscar Film Journal entry, here at Enuffa.com! Just getting back into the swing of things and chipping away at the list, and we're still in the early talkies era, with an adaptation of the hit Broadway comedy The Front Page.
Directed by Lewis Milestone and produced by Howard Hughes, The Front Page takes place almost entirely in a Chicago press room, where reporters from different newspapers await the impending hanging of a convicted murderer whose death sentence may or may not be valid. The city's sheriff and mayor are up for re-election in a few days and have clearly used this public execution as political capital. When the convict escapes thanks to the sheriff's incompetence, one of the reporters hides him in the press room in the hopes of scoring an exclusive interview. Meanwhile that same reporter is on his way out of the business, having gotten engaged to his sweetheart, with plans to move to New York to become an advertising rep. His unscrupulous boss however will go to great lengths to convince/force him to stay, not wanting to lose his ace reporter.
The film's script by Bartlett Cormack and Charles Lederer (based on the play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur) is credited with birthing the trope of the fast-talking dirtbag newspaper reporter who'll do anything for a scoop. This is used extensively for comic effect, such as in a scene where the star reporter is juggling phone calls with both his boss and his fiancée, dancing back and forth between mouthpieces. The language is so fast and snappy it's often dizzyingly hard to follow, and when one side of a telephone call is portrayed there doesn't even seem to be enough space for the person on the other end to have said anything. But no matter, audiences of the time loved the rapid-fire dialogue and it became synonymous with Depression-era news reporting.
Also of interest was the idea that the news was only as accurate as the fella reporting it; at one point we see the sheriff explaining the situation to one of the reporters, while two others make calls into their respective papers to break the story, each explaining it in every different ways, with very different agendas. Then there's the idea of the crooked lawman; the state's governor sends word to the mayor and the sheriff that the convict's death sentence has been commuted, but rather than risk their respective re-elections by NOT having him executed, the mayor attempts to bribe the messenger so he can pretend he never got the order. Corrupt politicians knowingly making morally bankrupt choices for political gain, as morally bankrupt reporters spin the story to sell papers - what a sad state of affairs that both of these ideas still resonate almost a hundred years later.
The Front Page has some striking cinematography for the time, signaling that sound filmmakers were beginning to balance the need for stable audio with the desire to present a visually engaging experience. The camera makes sudden dollying moves at times, such as when the convict escapes and gunshots and shouting can be heard outside the window - we see the reporters reacting to the noise as the camera abruptly pulls way back, through the window itself. There are also moments where each of the reporters is calling his paper to break a story item and we get rapid cuts from one man to the next; Milestone knew how to use the rhythm of editing to help tell the story and keep the audience actively paying attention. Even the opening credits are novel, presenting the titles and cast info as newspaper articles.
The overall narrative itself is a little on the pedestrian side, with the main character having to choose between the career he loves and the woman he loves, his boss not wanting to let him leave, the various shenanigans involving the hiding of the convict, etc. I didn't find the story itself super engaging, but was fairly fascinated with the way it was told; it's always interesting to see early filmmakers discovering novel visual techniques for their time.
The Front Page lost the Best Picture award that year to Cimarron, which I think was the right call just by a hair.
But I'll give The Front Page a gentleman's *** out of ****.
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