THE FRONT PAGE: Blu-ray (Universal, 1974) Kino Lorber
When Billy Wilder
elected to re-re-make The Front Page (1974) his real ‘glory days’ were
arguably well behind him. Indeed, Wilder had only two more movies left in him,
the sublime and scathing – if equally as overlooked Fedora (1978), and
the less than impressive, Buddy Buddy (1981) for which his reputation
could just as easily have done without. Just prior to The Front Page,
Wilder’s standing in the industry had suffered a pair of box office
disappointments; 1970’s lavishly appointed and intricately plotted The Private
Life of Sherlock Holmes, and the spry sex comedy, Avanti! (1972).
Neither was an artistic failure, despite each’s inability to bring in the crowds.
In fact, Wilder’s reboot of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ is one of the best
re-toolings of a film franchise in movie history, given to superb performances by
Robert Stephens, Colin Blakely and Christopher Lee. But back to The Front
Page that, at least for Wilder, disproved the old adage about ‘third time’
being ‘the charm.’ Wilder and Universal – the studio footing the bills this
time - had a lot riding on it; not the least, a level of expectation Wilder
would – and could – somehow top Howard Hawks’ glorious reworking of the
material that had resulted in ‘still’ the best adaptation: His Girl Friday
(1940). After Avanti!’s box office implosion, Wilder toyed with the idea
of doing The Front Page. His decision to proceed thusly, flew in the face
of Wilder’s natural aversion to remakes in general, “... because if a
picture is good, you shouldn't… and if it's lousy, why remake it?” In the
years that would follow it, Wilder rarely spoke of The Front Page, which
he considered a blemish on his career, despite the fact that it earned a
healthy $15 million against its $4 million outlay.
Viewing The
Front Page today, though particularly from the vantage of its two superior
Hollywood predecessors - the aforementioned Hawksian outing and the original 1931
movie, directed by Lewis Milestone, Wilder’s ‘re-invention’ of a wheel
already well-greased by playwrights, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s
stagecraft – one cannot help but feel a linger sense of minor disappointment.
For although Wilder’s version reinstates some fairly blue language and the
original Hecht/MacArthur ending (Walter Burns declaring, “The son-of-a-bitch
stole my watch!”) that neither earlier incarnation was allowed to entertain,
due to censorship – and adlibs even more 4-letter cues, thanks to
embellishments made by Wilder and his longtime collaborator, I.A.L. Diamond –
thus, adding an acerbic layer of mercilessness to these yellow journalist
newspaper hounds, for which Hecht and MacArthur likely would have approved, The
Front Page somehow manages to fumble the frenetic pace necessary to make
all this bounce and vinegar work as it should, even if many of its vignettes remain
irascibly funny. The central performances by Walter Matthau, as the caustic and
cruel Walter Burns, editor of the Chicago Examiner, and Jack Lemmon, as his
brilliant, though mostly unwitting stooge, Hildebrand ‘Hildy’ Johnson, possess that
elusive spark of on-screen chemistry – by now, honed to a finite art by their
first coupling in Wilder’s The Fortune Cookie (1966), and, The Odd
Couple (1968). Ditto for old hams, Vincent Gardenia’s frazzled Sheriff ‘Honest
Pete’ Hartman, David Wayne’s effete columnist, Roy Bensinger, Austin Pendleton’s
bewildered sacrificial lamb, Earl Williams (in a role heavily expanded upon in
Wilder’s adaptation) and, Martin Gabel’s Germanic quack, Dr. Max J. Eggelhofer,
who inadvertently sets the wheels of this plot in motion by lending Earl the
Sheriff’s gun to recreate his crime as an exercise to release Earl’s pent up ‘sexual
frustrations’.
Also, distinguished,
if in mere cameos, Allen Garfield, Charles Durning, and, Herb Edelman as rival
reporters, Kruger, Murphy and Schwartz respectively; Harold Gould as the
corrupt Mayor, who tries to bury the governor’s reprieve of Earl Williams
simply to get re-elected; Cliff Osmond as the lumbering Officer Jacobi; Paul
Benedict’s charmingly obtuse solicitor, Plunkett, and finally, Jon Korkes as
Rudy Keppler, Burns’ ineffectual ‘replacement’ to cover Earl Williams’ hanging
after Hildy announces his impromptu retirement plans. The disappointments can
be distilled down to two supporting roles: the first, played with far too much
doe-eyed saccharine by Susan Sarandon as Peggy Grant, Hildy’s fiancée; the second,
Carol Burnett’s painfully punctuated performance as the raging and bitter
whore, Mollie Malloy, the apple of Earl William’s eye, who narrowly escapes
death after leaping from the broken third-story window of the press club. After decades of insisting on producer’s
credit, Wilder relinquished this much control to Paul Monash, in order to
invest himself, body and soul, on re-writing the material and directing it. The
idea of remaking The Front Page likely appealed to Wilder – a former newspaperman
in his younger years, who still recalled the profession as slightly seedy, if
strangely glamorous. Unlike the earlier screen adaptations, set in their
respective ‘contemporary’ milieu, Wilder’s film harks all the way back to 1929 –
partly, to take advantage of Henry Bumstead’s meticulous production design, but
also, acknowledging that, by 1974, newspapers were no longer the dominant source
of information they had once been. For exteriors, Bumstead encouraged Wilder to
shoot in San Francisco; its architecture, a flat-on match for 1920’s Chicago.
The production also shot interiors at L.A.’s Orpheum Theater and the Los Angeles
Herald Examiner.
Wilder, who had
begun his Hollywood tenure as a screenwriter, and furthermore, respected the
potency of the spoken word, together with I.A.L Diamond, insisted on absolute adherence
to their screenplay during shooting. Actors were not allowed to change a
syllable, resulting in numerous takes to get things just right, and, the
replacement of the original actor, who kept flubbing his lines, as city desk
editor, Duffy (a role eventually filled by John Furlong). Diamond also insisted
that the dialogue be crisp, with no overlap so every word could be digested by
the audience; a decision, Jack Lemmon believed ‘hurt’ the picture’s pacing in
the end. The other insistence on Wilder’s part served the shoot particularly
well – ‘cutting in camera’ – or shooting only enough coverage to edit the picture
one way, resulting in editor, Ralph E. Winter having a rough cut assembled for
Wilder a mere 4 days after principal photography had wrapped. The Front Page
opens with a meticulous illustration of precisely how the daily news is typeset
and mass produced in the presses – a sequence showcased under its main titles. We
digress into the offices of Editor-in-chief, Walter Burns, a notorious
newspaper man who will stop at nothing to sniff out a good story. At present,
the biggest scoop in town is the pending public execution of one Earl Williams,
a man wrongfully convicted of the murder of a police officer. In reality,
Williams’ weapon was accidentally discharged, resulting in the officer’s death.
Burns is on fire, shouting obscenities aplenty at his city desk editor, Duffy,
and demanding to know the whereabouts of his star reporter, Hildy Johnson.
Indeed, without Hildy’s brilliant poisoned pen, the Examiner would be nothing
at all and Walter knows it.
But Hildy is MIA.
Walter has his boys scouring the city, from barroom to brothel, but to no
avail. And then, unexpectedly, in struts Hildy Johnson, looking fresh and
dapper, all bounce and charisma as he announces to Walter, he has decided to
leave the newspaper business for good to marry the girl he loves; Peggy Grant,
an organist at the local movie house. The pair plan to honeymoon far away from
the bustle of the Examiner; Hildy already accepting a job with Grant’s father’s
marketing firm in San Francisco. Naturally, Walter cannot have his star
reporter bolt. So, he sets about to wreck Hildy’s love affair. Arriving at the
theater where Peggy works, Walter poses as a probation officer and informs the naïve
Peggy that Hildy is a serial flasher who is unable to leave the state.
Believing this ‘cock and bull’ story at first, Peggy is set right by Hildy, who
wisely deduces Walter is behind the ruse. Meanwhile, Sheriff Hartman and the
Mayor have concocted their own diabolical plot to see Earl Williams swing from
the gallows at dawn. It’s an election year and neither’s reputation or track
record in public office has been sterling. However, thanks to the Examiner’s
coverage, Earl Williams has been transformed from an inept leftist into a
dangerous threat from Moscow. So, the public is anxious to see him put to death.
Regrettably, Plunkett, a solicitor, has just come from the governor’s office
with a reprieve for Earl. Instead, Hartman and the Mayor encourage Plunkett to
administer his document tomorrow afternoon, at which time Earl will already
have been executed. They also suggest Plunkett partake of some ‘excellent Chinese
food’ at Madam Chow’s – actually a brothel, surely to keep the obtuse Plunkett
entertained for hours.
The Division
Street prostitute, Mollie Malloy arrives at the press club and admonishes the
reporters for having made a mockery of Earl’s relatively innocuous past. The ‘gentlemen’
of the press are decidedly unimpressed by Mollie’s outpouring of sincerity
for Williams and do everything to incur her wrath. She leaves, bitter, angry
and desperate to see justice done. Meanwhile Sheriff Hartman is forced to
entertain a psychological examination of Earl Williams by Dr. Eggelhofer – a pseudo-Freudian-psychoanalyst
who infers that Earl’s impetus for shooting the police officer is the wholly
fabricated suppression of his childhood memory, whereby Earl was caught by his
father masturbating. Borrowing Hartman’s loaded gun – as a phallic symbol –
Eggelhofer demands Earl reenact the moment of his crime. Instead, Earl manages
to shoot his way out of the Hall of Justice, climbing onto an adjacent ledge
and bursting into the press club, badly wounded, while the reporters, except
for Hildy, are out. Unable to resist the
lure of what promises to be the biggest story of his soon-to-be-over career,
Hildy conceals Earl inside the roll-top desk of rival columnist, Bensinger and telephones
Walter to hurry with all speed to the press room. Having heard about Earl’s escape, Mollie
barges in and discovers Earl hiding in the desk. She agrees to keep Earl’s
whereabouts a secret, even as the rest of the reporters rush in to report the latest
to their respective papers via telephone. When it seems as though several of
these hungry newshounds are on the cusp of unearthing Earl’s whereabouts,
Mollie throws herself from the third-floor window – a successful diversion that
briefly startles the otherwise callous reporters. Mercifully, Mollie is not
dead, but badly injured and taken to hospital to recover.
Alas, Walter’s
plans to have a crew of movers remove Bensinger’s desk, with Earl still inside
it, are foiled when Hartman arrives with Officer Jacobi and a small entourage
of armed men. Earl is taken into custody and Walter and Hildy arrested for
abetting a fugitive. Placed in the county lock-up, Hildy re-examines his
loyalties to the paper and Peggy. The boys are about to come to blows when the
jail is enlivened by the arrival of a gaggle of whores from Madame Chow’s along
with a select group of her clientele; Hartman, informing the Mayor that it is
always beneficial to raid a brothel or two to show the public that their tax
dollars are hard at work. Regrettable, at least for Hartman, Plunkett’s is
among those incarcerated. Slightly
inebriated and, as ever, obtuse, Plunkett shares Earl’s reprieve from the governor
with Walter and Hildy. Feigning never having seen this document before, the Mayor
is forced to honor the reprieve now. As Earl is not a criminal, Walter and
Hildy cannot be charged either. In exchange for quashing the story, Walter
demands Hartman stall the midnight train out of Chicago so Hildy can be
reunited with Peggy. Walter and Hildy rush to the station and Hildy and Peggy
reconcile. Presumably as a gesture of good will - also, a wedding present -
Walter gives Hildy the watch he received years ago, its inscription ‘to the
best newspaper man I know’ a fitting farewell…or so it would seem. However,
as the train pulls out of station, Walter casually strolls to the telegraph
office, instructing its operator to send a wire onto the next stop in Gary, Indiana,
for the arrest of Hildy Johnson, who has just ‘stolen’ his solid gold watch! In
the movie’s epilogue credits we learn Hildy married Peggy, but came back to
work for Walter, and, Earl and Mollie were also wed, opening up a ‘health food’
store.
The virtues of The
Front Page far outweigh its deficits. While this third incarnation of the
time-honored fable is not quite as spry or, decidedly as ‘original’, it does
possess Wilder and Diamond’s razor-back and cynical wit, expertly played by
Matthau and Lemmon as the feuding fair-weathers. The stichomythic exchanges
of dialogue are intricately woven into a tapestry of hilarious barbs, indiscriminately
lobbed in all directions; most of the time, hitting the bull’s eye for pure
laughs. In his attempt to ‘open up’ the play, Wilder occasionally departs into
needless vignettes; the brief musical interlude at the theater, where Peggy
sings Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson’s 1928 ditty, ‘Button Up Your Overcoat’
to a packed house, stalls the action for no real purpose other than to prove
Susan Sarandon can carry a tune (and she can). The Front Page is at its
best when it allows Matthau and Lemmon the girth of their well-oiled
professionalism to explore Walter and Hildy’s caustic relationship to flourish
and rail against the increasing frazzled Vincent Gardenia – who is as imbued
with that necessary spark to tickle our funny bones, if not more so, than our
stars. In his expanded role, Austin
Pendleton is charming; the part of the dupe, tailor-made for his wide-eyed naiveté.
Henry Bumstead’s sets are superb. Ditto for Burton Miller’s costuming, all of
it augmented by Jordan S. Cronenweth’s cinematography to evoke the 1920’s to
perfection. Reportedly, Carol Burnett was very displeased with her performance.
Indeed, the comedienne would later recall her horror at boarding a plane, only
to discover its ‘in-flight’ movie was The Front Page. Unable to prevent
the screening, Burnett did one better, making a preemptive and impromptu
apology to her fellow passengers for the performance they were about to
witness. In hindsight, Burnett’s turn as the tragic hooker is not as awful as
many critics of the day reviewed it. While it is certain, Burnett lacks subtly –
every line issuing from her lips, spent as though with a heavy swat to knock
over even the attendees in the back row of the theater – she does manage an air
of empathy wed to Mollie’s sheer disgust for the way Earl William’s case has
been handled by these ‘gentlemen of the press’, whom she spits on before
departing the room. Although The Front Page turned a profit – the first
Wilder movie since Irma La Douce (1963) to do so – Wilder was hardly
pleased with the results. Indeed, he never mentioned the picture when discussing
his career, and only when asked by an interviewer, would entertain the briefest
of reflections before moving on to some other topic. Yet, The Front Page
is hardly a clunker. While this third attempt at the same material lacks
something, it has its moments to recommend it. Let’s face it: second-tier
Wilder is first-tier everybody else. So, The Front Page is solid
entertainment - if not perfect. To paraphrase a Wilder adage from another
Wilder’s film, “Nobody is!”
The Front Page arrives on
Blu-ray via Kino Lorber’s alliance with Universal Home Video. The 1080p
transfer here is cribbing from dated digital files. While much of the Panavision
2.35:1 image looks quite solid, with generally appealing colors and excellent
contrast, there are noticeable color density fluctuations throughout, and,
flesh tones that appear more ruddy than natural. The image often exhibits a gritty
texture, with film grain never entirely looking indigenous to its source. I
sincerely wish that the powers that be at Universal would realize their ‘hit
or miss’ philosophy in preserving their back catalog really does them no
favors with collectors. We are never entirely certain what to expect from a
Universal release. Results vary from absolute perfection to unmitigated travesty.
The Front Page falls somewhere squarely in the middle of these polar
opposites. It looks good, but could have been a lot better. The DTS 1.0 mono is
adequate. As this is primarily a dialogue-driven movie (and how!) the audio is
crisp without being strident. We get an audio commentary from Michael
Schlesinger and Mark Evanier - marginally engaging, but light on facts. There
are also a pair of interviews; the first, running nearly a half-hour and
featuring first assistant, Howard G. Kazanjian and assistant to Billy Wilder,
Rex McGee, who possess amazing recall. The second interview is with co-star,
Austin Pendleton and barely lasts 9 min. Finally, Kino has stacked this disc
with trailers for all the other Wilder movies they have to peddle. Bottom line:
The Front Page is a good – not great – movie. The same can be said of
this Blu-ray remastering effort. Recommended with caveats.
FILM RATING (out
of 5 – 5 being the best)
3.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
3.5
EXTRAS
2.5
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