“The modern man--that's Hawks, completely” (Henri Langlois). Screwball comedy required sound. It also required the genius of directors like Howard Hawks who had a sense of sound as movement. And actors like Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, who could talk faster than actors today can think. “Screwball comedy,” writes William K. Everson in Films in Review, “having its basic roots in reality, needs the subtlety of sound and the ability to underplay dialogue for maximum effectiveness. (It's difficult, though not impossible, to underplay a title.)” In His Girl Friday, the lines come at breakneck speed, dialogue overlapping constantly, and one is left not with a string of one-liners but with a jazz-like sound quality: dense, rhythmic, layered, moving. Grant and Russell are at their most brilliant as Walter Burns, the cocky newsroom editor, and Hildy Johnson, the crime reporter who gets 'em in the classified ads every time. Ralph Bellamy can't keep up with them, but, as usual, tries hard.